
Class Kk ^ '/^CU> 



Book 



1 r/ c- r / 

SMITHSOMIAN DEPOSIT 



BACON'S ESSAYS: 






ANNOTATIONS 



RICHARD WHATELY, D. D., 

ARCHBISHOP OF DUBLIN. 



;ffrom tftc Stconli lonibon Siritioir, fEltbtstlJ. 



NEW YORK: 

C. S. FRAN"CIS & CO., 554 BROADAVAT. 

BOSTON: 53 DEVONSHIRE STREET. 
1857. 



PREFACE 



TTAYINGr been accustomed to write down, from time to 
-*— *- time, such observations as occurred to me on several of 
Bacon's Essays, and also to make references to passages in 
various books which relate to the same subjects, I have been 
induced to lay the whole before the Public in an edition of 
these Essays. And in this I have availed myself of the 
assistance of a friend, who, besides offering several valuable 
suggestions, kindly undertook the task of revising and arrang- 
ing the loose notes I had written down, and adding, in foot- 
notes, explanations of obsolete words and phrases. 

In order to guard against the imputation of presumption in 
venturing to make additions to what Bacon has said on several 
subjects, it is necessary to call attention to the circumstance 
that the word ESSAY has been considerably changed in its 
application since the days of Bacon. By an Essay was origi- 
nally meant — according to the obvious and natm-al sense of the 
word — a slight sketch, to be filled up by the reader; brief 
hints, designed to be followed out ; loose thoughts on some 
subjects, thrown out without much regularity, but sufficient to 
suggest further inquiries and reflections. Any more elaborate, 
regular, and finished composition, such as, in our days, often 
bears the title of an Essay, our ancestors called a treatise, 
tractate, dissertation, or discourse. But the more unpretending 
title of ' Essay' has in great measure superseded those others 
which were formerly in use, and more strictly appropriate. 

I have adverted to this circumstance because it ought to be 
remembered that an Essay, in the original and strict sense of 
the word, — an Essay such as Bacon's, — was designed to be 
suggestive of further remarks and reflections, and, in short, to 
set the reader a-thinking on the subject. With an Essay in the 



modern sense of the word it is not so. If the reader of what 
was designed to be a regular and complete treatise on some 
subj ect (and which would have been so entitled b v our forefathers) 
makes additional remarks on that subject, he may be under- 
stood to imply that there is a deficiency and imperfection — a 
something wanting— Aw the work before him ; whereas, to sug- 
gest sucli further remarks — to give outlines that the reader shall 
fill up for himself — is the very object of an Essay, properly so 
called — such as those of Bacon. 

He is, throughout, and especially in his Essays, one of the 
most suggestive authors that ever w^rote. And it is remarkable 
tliat, compressed and pithy as the Essays are, and consisting 
chiefly of brief hints, he jias elsewhere condensed into a still 
smaller compass the matter of' most of them. In his Rhetoric 
he has drawn up what he calls ' Antitheta,' or common-places, 
' locos,' i. e. pros and cons, — :opposite sentiments and reasons, on 
various points, most of them the same that are discussed in the 
Essays. It is a compendious and clear mode of bringing 
before the mind the most important points in any question, to 
place in parallel columns, as Bacon has done, whatever can be 
plausibly urged, fairly, or unfairly, on opposite sides ; and 
then you are in the condition of a judge M'ho has to decide some 
cause after having heard all the pleadings. I have accordingly 
appended to most of the Essays some of Bacon's ' Antitheta' on 
the same subjects. 

Perhaps it may be thought by some to be a superfluous task 
to say anything at all concerning a w^ork which has been in 
most people's hands for about two centuries and a-half, and 
has, in that time, rather gained than lost in popularity. But 
there are some qualities in Bacon's writings to which it is 
important to direct, from time to time, especial attention, on 
account of a tendency often showing itself, and not least at the 
present day, to regard with excessive admiration writers of a 
completely opposite character ; those of a mystical, dim, half 
intelligible kind of aflfected grandeur. 



f\ It is well known what a ftproacli to onr climate is the prev- 
alence of fogs, and how much more of risk and of inconve- 
nience results from that mixture of light and obscurity than 
from the darkness of night. But let any one imagine to him- 
self, if lie can, a mist so resplendent with gaj prismatic colours, 
that men should forget its inconveniences in their admiration 
of its beauty, and that a kind of nebular taste should prevail, 
for preferring that gorgeous dimness to vulgar daylight ; noth- 
ing short of this could afford a parallel to the mischief done 
to the public mind by some late writers both in England and 
America ; — a sort of ' Children of the Mist,' who bring for- 
ward their speculations, — often very silly, and not seldom very 
mischievous, — under cover of the twilight. They have accus- 
tomed their disciples to admire as a style sublimely philoso- 
phical, what may best be described as a certain haze of words 
imperfectly understood, through which some seemingly original 
ideas, scarcely distinguishable in their outlines, loom^ as it 
were, on the view, in a kind of dusky magnificence, that 
greatly exaggerates their real dimensions. 

In the October number of the Edinhurgh Beview, 1851 
(p. 513), the reviewer, though evidently disposed to regard with 
some favour a style of dim and mystical sublimity, remarks, that 
' a strange notion, which many have adopted of late years, is that 
a poem cannot be profound unless it is, in whole or in part, ob- 
scure ; the people like their prophets to foam and speak riddles.' 

But the reviewer need not have confined his remark to poe- 
try ; a similar taste prevails in reference to prose writers also. 
' I have ventured,' says the late Bishop Copleston (in a letter 
published in the Memoir of him by his nephew), 'to give the 
whole class the appellation of the ^ magic-lanthorn school,'' for 
their writings have the startling effect of that toy; children 
delight in it, and grown people soon get tired of it.' 

The passages here subjoined, from modern works in some 
repute, may serve as specimens (and a multitude of such might 
have been added) of the kind of style alluded to : — 
1* 



' Li truth, then, the idea (call it tlllt of day or that of night) 
is threefold, not twofold: — day, night, and their relation. Day 
is tlie thesis, night the antithesis, their relation the mesothesis 
of the triad, — ^for triad it is, and not a mere pair or duad, 
after all. It is the same with all the other couples cited above, 
and with all couples, for every idea is a trinitarian. Positive 
pole, negative one, and that middle term wherein they are 
made one ; sun, planet, their relation ; solar atom, planetary 
one, their conjunction, and so forth. The term of relation be- 
twixt the opposites in these ideal pairs is sometimes called the 
point of indifference, the mesoteric point, the mid-point. This 
mid-point is to be seen standing betwixt its right and left 
fellow-elements in every dictionary : for example, men, man, 
women ; or adjectively, male, human, female. ' So God cre- 
ated man in His own image : in the image of God created He 
him ; male and female created He them.' ' 

' ]Srow, this threefold constitution of ideas is universal. As 
all things seem to go in pairs to sense, and to the understand- 
ing, so all are seen in threes by reason. This law of antinomy 
is no limited, no planetary law, nor yet peculiarly human ; it is 
cosmical, all-embracing, ideal, divine. Not only is it impossible 
for man to think beauty without simultaneously thinking de- 
formity and their point of indifference, justice without injustice 
and theirs, unity without multiplicity and theirs, but those 
several theses (beauty, justice, unity, namely) cannot be thought 
without these their antitheses, and without the respective mid- 
dle terms of the pairs. As the eye of common-sense cannot 
have an inside without an outside, nor a solar orb without a 
planetary orbicle (inasmuch as it ceases to be solar the instant 
it is stript of its planet), so the eye of reason cannot see an 
inside without seeing an outside, and also their connexion as 
the inside and the outside of one and the same thing, nor a 
sun without his planet and their synthesis in a solar system. 
In short, three-in-one is the law of all thought and of all 
things. Nothing has been created, nothing can be thought, 



except upon the principle of three-in-one. Tliree-in-one is the 
deepest-lying cypher of the universe," 

Again : 'The ' relativity' of human knowledge, i. e., the meta- 
physical limitation of it, implies, we are told, the relation of a 
subject knowing to an object known. And what is known 
must be qualitatively known, inasmuch as we must conceive 
every object of which we are conscious, in the relation of a 
quality depending upon a substance. Moreover, this qualita- 
tively known object must he pi'otended, or conceived as existing 
in time, qxk^^ exUnded, or regarded as existing in space ; while 
its qualities are hiteiislve, or conceivable under degree. The 
thinkable, even when compelled by analysis to make the nearest 
approach that is possible to a negation of intelligibility, thus 
implies phenomena objectified hy thought, and conceived to exist 
in space and time. "With the help of these data, may we not 
discover and deiine the highest law of intelligence, and thus 
place the key-stone in the metaphysic arch ?' 

' If thou hast any tidings' (says Falstaff to Ancient Pistol) 
' prithee deliver them like a man of this world.' 

Again : ' Thus to the ancient, well-known logic, which -we 
might call the logic of identity, and which has for its axiom, 
' A thing can never he the contrary of that which it is^ Hegel 
opposes his own logic, according to which '■everything is at 
once that which it is, and the contrary of that which it is? By 
means of this he advances a jpriori / he proposes a thesis, from 
which he draws a new synthesis, not directly (which might be 
impossible), but indirectly, by means of an antithesis? 

Again : ' It [Eeligion] is a mountain air ; it is the erabalmer 
of the world. It is myrrh, and storax, and chlorine, and rose- 
mary. It makes the sky and the hills sublime ; and the silent 
song of the stars is it Always the seer is a sayer. 



This must have been in the mind of the poet who wrote — 
' So down the hill, romantic Ashbourne, glides 
The Derby Dilly, carrying three insides.' 



Somehow his dream is told, somehow he publishes it with 
solemn joy, sometimes with pencil on canvas, sometimes with 
chisel on stone; sometimes in towers and aisles of granite, 
his soul's worship is builded Man is the wonder- 
maker. He is seen amid miracles. Tlie stationariness of 
religion; the assumption that the age of inspiration is past, 
that the Bible is closed ; the fear of degrading the character of 
Jesus by representing him as a man, indicate with sufficient 
clearness the falsehood of our theology. It is the office of a 
true teacher to show us that God is, not was — that He speak- 
eth, not spoke. The true Christianity — a faith like Christ's in 
the infinitude of Man — is lost. Kone believeth in the soul 
of Man, but only in some man or person old and departed ! 
In how many churches, and by how many prophets, tell me, is 
Man made sensible that he is an infinite soul ; that the earth 
and heavens are passing into his mind ; and that he is drinking 
for ever the soul of God. 

'The very word Miracle, as pronounced by christian Churches, 
gives a false impression ; it is a monster ; it is not one with the 
blowing clover and the falling rain. . . . Man's life is a miracle, 
and all that man doth. ... A true conversion, a true Christ, is 
now, as always, to be made by the reception of beautiful senti- 
ments. . . . The gift of God to the soul is not a vaunting, over- 
powering, excluding sanctity, but a sweet natural goodness like 
thine and mine, and that thus invites thine and mine to be and 
to grow.' 

Now, without presuming to insinuate that such passages as 
these convey no distinct meaning to any reader, or to the 
writer, it may safely be maintained that to above ninety-nine 
hundredths — including, probably, many who admire them as 
profoundly wise — they are very dimly, if at all, intelligible. If 
the writers of them were called on to explain their meaning, as 
Mr. Bayes is, in The Rehearsal^ they might perhaps confess as 
frankly as he does, that the object was merely ' to elevate and 
surprise.' 



PREFACE. 



One may often hear some writers of the ' magic-lanthom 
school' spoken of as possessing wonderful j)ower, even "bj^ those 
who regret that this power is not better employed. 'It is 
pity,' we sometimes hear it said, 'that such and such an author 
does not express in simple, intelligible, unaifected English such 
admirable matter as his.' They little think that it is the 
strangeness and obscurity of the style that make the power 
displayed seem far greater than it is ; and that much of what 
they now admire as originality and profound wisdom, would 
appear, if translated into common language, to be mere common- 
place matter. Many a work of this description may remind 
one of the supposed ancient shield which had been found by 
the antiquary Martinus Scriblerus, and which he highly prized, 
incrusted as it was with venerable rust. He mused on the 
splendid appearance it must have had in its bright newness ; 
till, one day, an over-sedulous house-maid having scoured off the 
rust, it turned out to be merely an old pot-lid. 

It is chiefly in such foggy forms that the metaphysics and 
theology of Germany, for instance, are exercising a greater 
influence every day on popular literature. It has been zealously 
instilled into the minds of many, that Germany has something 
far more profound to supply than anything hitherto extant in 
our native literature ; though what that profound something is, 
seems not to be well understood by its admirers. They are, 
most of them, willing to take it for granted, with an implicit 
faith, that what seems such hard thinking, must be very accu- 
rate and original thinking also. What is abstruse and recondite 
they suppose must be abstruse and recondite wisdom ; though, 
perhaps, it is what, if stated in plain English, they would throw 
aside as partly trifling truisms, anc^partly stark folly. 

It is a remark which I have heard highly applauded, that a 
clear idea is generally a little idea ; for there are not a few 
persons who estimate the depth of thought as an unskilful eye 
would estimate the depth of water. Muddy water is apt to be 
supposed deeper than it is, because you cannot see to the 



bottom ; very clear water, on the contrary, will always seem 
less deep than it is, both from the well-known law of refrac- 
tion, arid also because it is so thoroughly penetrated by the 
sight. Men fancy that an idea must have been always obvious 
to every one, when they find it so plainly presented to the mind 
that every one can easily take it in. An explanation that is 
perfectly clear, satisfactory, and simple, often causes the unreflect- 
ing to forget that they had needed any explanation at all. And 
truths that are, in practice, frequently overlooked, they will 
deride as ' vapid truisms' if very jplainly set forth, and will 
wonder that any one should think it worth while to notice 
them. 

Now, Bacon is a striking instance of a genius who could 
think so profoundly, and at the same time so clearly, that an 
ordinary man understands readily most of his wisest sayings, 
and, perhaps, thinks them so self-evident as hardly to need 
mention. But, on re-consideration and repeated meditation, 
you perceive more and more what extensive and important 
applications one of his maxims will have, and how often it 
has been overlooked : and on returning to it again and again, 
fresh views of its importance will continually open on you. 
One of his sayings will be like some of the heavenly bodies 
that are visible to the naked eye, but in which you see con- 
tinually more and more, the better the telescope you apply to 
them. 

The ' dark sayings,' on the contrary, of some admired writers, 
may be compared to a fog-bank at sea, which the navigator at 
first glance takes for a chain of majestic mountains, but which, 
when approached closely, or when viewed through a good glass, 
proves to be a mere mass of unsubstantial vapours. 

A large proportion of Bacon's works has been in great 
measure superseded, chiefly through the influence exerted by 
those works themselves ; for, the more satisfactory and efiectual 
is the refutation of some prevailing errors, and the establish- 



PEEFACE. Xi 

ment of some j)liilosop]iical principles that had been overlooked, 
the less need is there to resort for popular use, to the argu- 
ments by which this has been effected. Thej are like the 
trenches and batteries by which a besieged town has been 
assailed, and which are abandoned as soon as the capture has 
been effected. 

'I have been labouring,' says some writer who had been 
engaged in a task of this kind (and Bacon might have said the 
same) — 'I have been labouring to render myself useless.' 
Great part, accordingly, of what were the most important of 
Bacon's works are now resorted to chiefly as a matter of curious 
and interesting speculation to the studious few, while the effect 
of them is practically felt by many who never read, or perhaps 
even heard of them. 

/t But his Essays retain their popularity, as relating chiefly to 
the concerns of e very-day life, and whichf as he himself expresses 
it, ' come home to men's business and bosoms.' 

'In the Pure and in the Physical Sciences,' says an able 
writer in the Edinhurg Review^ 'each generation inherits 
the conquests made by its predecessors. ]^o mathematician 
has to redemonstrate the problems of Euclid ; no phj^sio- 
logist has to sustain a controversy as to the circulation of 
the blood ; no astronomer is met by a denial of the principle 
of gravitation. But in the Moral Sciences the ground seems 
never to be incontestably won ; and this is peculiarly the case 
witli respect to the Sciences which are subsidiary to the arts of 
administration and legislation. Opinions prevail and are acted 
on. The evils which appear to result from their practical 
application lead to inquiry. Tlieir erroneousness is proved by 
philosophere, is acknowledged by the educated Public, and at 
length is admitted even by statesmen. The Policy founded on 
the refuted error is relaxed, and the evils which it inflicted, so 
far as they are capable of remedy, are removed or mitigated. 



■ See Ed'mburg Review, July, 1843, No. 157. 



After a time new theorists arise, wlio are seduced or impelled 
bj some moral or intellectual defect or error to reassert the 
exploded doctrine. They have become entangled by some 
logical fallacy, or deceived by some inaccurate or incomplete 
assumption of facts, or tliink that they see the means of ac- 
quiring reputation, or of promoting their interests, or of grati- 
fying their political or their private resentments, by attacking 
the altered policy. All popular errors are plausible ; indeed, if 
they were not so they would not be popular. The plausibility 
to whicli the revived doctrine owed its original currency, makes 
it acceptable to those to whom the subject is new ; and even 
among those to whom it is familial', probably ninety-nine out 
of every hundred are accustomed t5 take their opinions on such 
matters on trust. Tliey hear with surprise that what they 
supposed to be settled is questioned, and often avoid the trouble 
of inquiring by endeavoiiring to believe that the truth is not to 
be ascertained. And thus the cause has again to be pleaded 
before judges, some of whom are prejudiced, and others will 
not readily attend to reasoning founded on premises which they 
think unsusceptible of proof.' 

To treat fully of f3ie design and character of Bacon's greater 
works, and of the mistakes — which are not few or unimportant 
— that prevail respecting them, would be altogether unsuited to 
this "Work. But it may be worth while to introduce two brief 
remarks on that subject. 

(1.) The prevailing fault among philosoj)her8 in Bacon's time, 
and long before, was hasty, careless, and scanty observation, 
and the want of copious and patient experiment. On supposed 
facts not carefully ascertained, and often on mere baseless con- 
jecture, they proceeded to reason, often very closely and ingeni- 
ously ; forgetting that no architectural skill in a superstructure 
will give it greater firmness " than the foundation on which it 
rests ; and thus they of course failed of arriving at true con- 
clusions ; for, the most accurate reasoning is of no avail, if 



you have not well-established facts and principles to start 
from. 

Bacon laboured zealously and powerfully to recall philosophere 
from the study of fanciful systems, based on crude conjectures, 
or on imperfect knowledge, to the careful and judicious investi- 
gation, or, as he called it, ' interrogation' and ' interpretation 
of nature ;' the collecting and properly arranging of well-ascer- 
tained facts. And the maxims which he laid down and enforced 
for the conduct of philosophical inquiry, are universally admitted 
to have at least greatly contributed to the vast progress which 
physical science has been making since his time. 

But though Bacon dwelt on the importance of setting out 
from an accurate knowledge of facts, and on the absurdity of 
attempting to substitute the reasoning-process for an investi- 
gation of nature, it would be a great mistake to imagine that 
he meant to disparage the i-easoning-process, or to substitute 
for skill and correctness in that, a mere accumulated knowledge 
of a multitude of facts. And any one would be far indeed 
from being a follower of Bacon, who should despise logical ac- 
curacy, and trust to what is often called experience, meaning 
by that, an extensive but crude and undigested observation. 
For, as t)Ooks, though indispensably necessary for a student, are 
of no use to one who has not learned to read, though he dis- 
tinctly sees black marks on white paper, so in all experience and 
acquaintance with facts unprofitable, to one whose mind has not 
been trained to read rightly the volume of nature, and of human 
transactions, spread before him. 

When complaints are made — often not altogether without 
reason — of the prevailing ignorance of facts, on such or such 
subjects, it will often be found that the parties censured, though 
possessing less knowledge than is desirable, yet possess more 
than they know \^'hat to do with. Tlieir deficiency in arranging 
and appl;)ang their knowledge, in combining facts, and correctly 
deducing, and rightly employing, general principles, will be 
perhaps greater than their ignorance of facts. Xow, to attempt 



remedying this defect by imparting to them additional know- 
ledge, to confer the advantage of wider experience on those who 
have not skill in profiting by experience, — ^is to attempt enlarging 
the prospect of a short-sighted man by bringing him to the 
top of a hill. Since he could not, on the plain, see distinctly 
the objects before him, the wider horizon from the hill-top is 
utterly lost on him. 

In the tale of Sandford and MeHon, where the two boys are 
described as amusing themselves with building a hovel, they lay 
poles horizontally on the top, and cover them with straw, so as 
to make a flat roof; of course the rain comes through; and 
Master Merton proposes then to lay on more straw. But Sand- 
ford, the more intelligent boy, remarks, that as long as the 
roof is flat, the rain must sooner or later soak through; and 
that the remedy is, to alter the building, and form the roof 
sloping. Now, the idea of enlightening incorrect reasoners by 
additional knowledge, is an error analogous to that of the flat 
roof: of course knowledge is necessary; so is straw to thatch 
the roof; but no quantity of materials will be a substitute for , 
luiderstandiug how to build. 

But the unwise and incautious are always prone to rush from 
an error on one side into an opposite error. And a reaction 
accordingly took place from the abuse of reasoning, to the undue 
neglect of it, and from the fault of not sufficiently observing 
facts, to that of trusting to a mere accumulation of ill-arranged 
knowledge. '"It is as if men had formerly spent vain labour in 
threshing over and over again the same straw, and winnowing 
the same chafl', and then their successoi-s had resolved to discard 
those processes altogether, and to bring home and use wheat 
and weeds, straw, chaff, and grain, just as they grew, and with- 
out any preparation at all. , . 

If Bacon had lived in the present day, I am convinced he 
would have made his cliief complaint against unmethodized 
inquiry, and careless and illogical reasoning ; certainly he would 
not have complained of Dialectics as corrupting philosophy. 



To guard now against the evils prevalent in hi^ time, wonld be 
to fortify a town against battering-rams instead of against 
cannon. 

(2.) The other remark I would make on Bacon's greater 
works is, that he does not rank high as a ' natural philosopher.' 
His genius lay another way ; not in the direct pursuit of phy- 
sical science, but in discerning and correcting the errors of 
philosophers, and laying down the principles on which they 
ought to proceed. According to Horace's illustration, his office 
was not that of the razor, but the hone, ' acutum reddere quae 
ferrum valet, exsors, ipsa secandi.' 

The poet Cowley accordingly has beautifully compared Bacon 
to Moses, 

' Who did upon the very border stand 
Of that feir promised land ;' 

who had brought the Israelites out of Egypt, and led them 
through the wilderness to the entrance into the land flowing 
with milk and honey, which he was allowed to view from the 
hil-top, but not himself to enter. 

It requires the master-mind of a great general to form the 
plan of a campaign, and to direct aright the movements of great 
bodies of troops : but the greatest general may perhaps fall far 
short of many a private soldier in the use of the musket or the 
sword. 

But Bacon, though far from being without a taste for the 
pursuits of physical science, had an actual inaptitude for it, as 
might be shown by many examples. The discoveries of Coper- 
nicus and Galileo, for instance, which had attracted attention 
before and in his own time, he appears to have rejected or dis- 
regarded. 

But one of the most remarkable specimens of his inaptitude 
for practically carrying out his own principles in matters con- 
nected with Physical Science, is his speculation concerning the 
well-known plant called misselto. He notices the popular 
belief of his own time, that it is a true plant, propagated by 



XVI PKEFACE. 

its berries, wbicli are dropped by birds on tbe bougbs of otber 
trees ; a fact alluded to in a Latin proverb applicable to those 
who create future dangers for themselves ; for, the ancient 
Romans prepared birdlime for catching birds from the misselto 
thus propagated. Kow this account of the plant, which has 
long since been universally admitted, Bacon rejects as a vulgar 
error, and insists on it that misselto is not a true plant, but an 
excrescence from the tree it grows on ! Nothing can be con- 
ceived more remote from the spirit of the Baconian philosophy 
than thus to substitute a random conjecture for careful investi- 
gation : and that, too, when there actually did exist a prevail- 
ing belief, and it was obviously the first step to inquire whether 
this were or were not well-founded. 

The matter itself, indeed, is of little importance ;' but it indi- 
cates, no less than if it were of the greatest, a deficiency in the 
application of his own principles. For, one who takes deliber- 
ate aim at some object, and misses it, is proved to be a bad 
marksman, whether the object itself be insignificant or not. 

But rarely, if ever, do we find any such failures in Bacon's 
speculations on human character and conduct. It was there 
that his strength lay ; and in that department of philosophy it 
may safely be said that he had few to equal, and none to excel 
him. 

I have inserted in the Annotations, extracts from several 
works of various authors, including some of my own. If I had, 
instead of this, merely given references, this would have been to 
expect every reader either to be perfectly familiar with all the 
works referred to, or at least to have them at hand, and to take 
the trouble to look out and peruse each passage. This is what 
I could not reasonably calculate on. And I had seen lament- 
able instances of an author's being imperfectly understood, and 
sometimes grievously misunderstood, by many of his readers 
who were not so familiar as he had expected them to be with 
his previous works, and with others which had been alluded 
to, but not cited. 



Cavillers, however — ^persons of the description noticed in the 
Annotations on Essay xlvii. — will be likely to complain of the 
rej)rinting of passages from other books. And if the opposite 
course had been adopted, of merely giving references to them, 
the same cavillers would probably have complained that the 
reader of this volume was expected to sit down to the study of 
it with ten or twelve other volumes on the table before him, 
and to look out each of the passages referred to. For 'you 
must think this, look you, that the worm will do his kind." 

I chose, then, rather to incur the blame of the fault — if it be 
one — of encumbering the volume with two or three additional 
sheets, which, to some readers, may be superfluous, than to run 
the risk of misleading or needlessly oifending many others, by 
omitting, and merely referring to, something essential to the 
argument, which they might not have seen, or might not dis- 
tinctly remember. 

The passages thus selected are, of course, but a few out of 
many in which the subjects of these Essays have been treated 
of. I have inserted those that seemed most to the purpose, 
without expecting that all persons should agree in approving 
the selections made. But any one who thinks that some pas- 
sages from other writers contain better illustrations than those 
here given, has only to edit the Essays himself with such ex- 
tracts as he prefers. 



Antony and Cleopatra, Act y. 



OOlfTENTS 



ESSAT PAOB 

I-t-Of Tkuth 1 

II, Of DeIth 14 

III. Of Unity in Religion - 20 

IV. Of Eetenge . . - 45 

V. Of Adversity 52 

VI. Of Simulation and Dissimulation . . . .63 

VII. Of Parents and Children ..... 71 

VIII. Of Marriage and Single Life 75 

IX. Of Envy 80 

X. Of Love 88 

XL Of Great Place 92 

XIL Of Boldness 109 

XIII. Of Goodness and Goodness of Naiuee , . . 112 

XIV. Of Nobility 119 

XV. Of Seditions and Troubles 124 

XVI. Of Atheism 140 

XVII. Of Superstition 153 

XVIIL Of Travel 178 

XIX. Of Empire 184 

XX. Of Counsel . . .189 

XXL Of Delays 198 

XXII. Of Cunning 204 

XXIII. Of Wisdom for Man's Self 218 

XXIV. Of Innovations 225 

XXV. Of Dispatch 246 

XXVL Of Seeming Wise 252 

XXVIL Of Friendship 259 

XXVIII. Of Expense 277 

XXIX. Of the True Greatness of Ejngdoms and Estates 283 

XXX. Of Regimen of Health 301 

XXXI. Of Suspicion 306 

XXXIL Of Discourse .820 

XXXni. Of Plantations 329 

XXXIV. Of Riches 343 



XX CONTENTS. 

BS8AY 'AOB 

SXXV, Of Prophboies 353 

XXXVI. Of Ambition 360 

XXXVII. Of Masques and Triumphs ... . . . 363 

XXXVIII. Of Nature in Men 367 

XXXIX. Of Custom and Education . . . . . 371 

XL. Of Fortune. 385 

XLL Of Usury 390 

XLII. Of Youth and Age 397 

XLIII. Of Beauty 406 

XLIV. Of Deformity 408 

XLV. Of Building 410 

XLVI. Of Gardens 415 

XLVII. Of Negotiating 423 

XLVIII. Of Followers and Friends 437 

5LIX. Of Suitors .441 

^-L. Of Studies " 444 

LI. Of Factton T 474 

LII. Of Ceremonies and Eespeots 479 

LIII. Of Praise 483 

LIV. Of Vain Glory 493 

LV. Of Honour and Reputation 496 

LVI. Of Judicature 504 

LVIL Of Anger 513 

LVIII. Of Vicissitudes of Things 519 

A Fragment of an Essay on Fame 525 

The Praise of Knowledge ........ 529 



BACON'S ESSAYS 



ESSAY I. OF TRUTH. 

'TTTHAT is trutli?' said jesting Pilate, and would not stay 
» ' for an answer. Certainly there be that delight ■ in 
giddiness, and count it a bondage to fix a belief — afi'ecting^ 
free-will in thin'Emg, as well as in acting — and, though the 
sects of philosophers of that kind be gone, yet there remain 
certain discoursing- wits which are of the same veins, though 
there be not so much blood in them as was in those of the 
ancients. But it is not only the difficulty and labour which 
men take in finding out of truth ; nor again, that, when it is 
found, it imposeth^ upon men's thoughts, that doth bring lies 
in favour ; but a natural, though corrupt love of the lie 
itself. One of the later schools of the Grecians examineth the 
matter, and is at a stand to think what should be in it, that 
men should love lies, where neither they make for pleasure, as 
with poets, nor for advantage, as with the merchant, but for 
the lie's sake. But I cannot tell : this same truth is a naked 
and open daylight, that doth not show the masques, and mum- 
meries, and triumphs of the world, half so stately and daintily* 
as candle-lights. Truth may perhaps come to the price of a 
pearl, that showeth best by day; but it will not rise to the 



* Affect. To aim at ; endeavour after. 

' This proud man affects imperial s-way.' — Dryden. j 

' Discoursing. Discursive ; ramhlivg. 

' We, through madness, • 

From strange conceits in our discoursing brains, 
And prate of things as we pretend they ■were.' — Ford. 
' Impose upon. To lay a restraint upon. (Bacon's Latin original is, ' Cogita- 
tionibus imponitur captivitas.') 

' Unreasonable impositions on the mind and practice.' — Watts. 

* Daintily. Elegantly. 

"The Duke exceeded in that his leg was daintily formed.' — Wotton, 



2 Of Truth. [Essay i. 

price of a diamond or carbuncle, that sliowetli "best in varied 
lights. A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure. Doth any 
man doubt, that if there were taken out of men's minds vain 
opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one 
would,' and the like, but it would leave the minds of a number 
of men poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposi- 
tion, and unpleasing^ to themselves? One of the fathers, in 
great severity, called poesy 'vinum dsemonum,'^ because it 
iilleth the imagination, and yet is but with the shadow of a 
lie. But it is not the lie that passeth through the mind, but 
the lie that sinketh in and settleth in it that doth the hurt, 
such as we spake of before. But howsoever* these things are 
thus in men's depraved judgments and affections, yet truth, 
which only doth judge itself, teacheth that the inquiry of truth, 
which is the love-making, or wooing of it — the knowledge of 
truth, which is the presence of it — and the belief of truth, 
which is the enjoying of it — is the sovereign good of human 
nature. The first creature of God, in the works of the days, 
was the light of the sense, the last was the light of reason, 
and his Sabbath work, ever since, is the illumination of his 
spirit. First he breathed light upon the face of the matter, or 
chaos, then he breathed light into the face of man ; and still he 
breatheth and inspireth light into the face of his chosen. The 
poet,^ that beautified the sect,^ that was otherwise inferior to the 
rest, saith yet excellently well, 'It is a pleasure to stand upon 
the shore, and to see ships tost upon the sea ; a pleasure to 
stand in the window of a castle, and to see a battle, and the 
adventures^ thereof below ; but no j^leasure is comparable to the 
standing upon the vantage ground of truth (a hill not to be 



' As one would. At pleasure ; unrestrained. 

* Unpleasing. Unplcaaant ; distasteful. 

' How dares thy tongue 
Sound the unpleasing news T — Shalcespcre. 

* 'Wine of demons.' — Augustine. 

* Howsoever. Although. 

'Tlie man doth fear God, hoivsoever it seems not in him.' — Shakespere. 
"* Lucretius, ii. 

* The Epicureans. 

* Adventures. Fortunes. 

' She smiled with silver cheer, 
And wished me fair adventure for the year.' — I>ryden. 



Essay i.] , Of Truth. *3 

commanded, and where the air is always clear and serene), and 
to see the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tempests, in 
the vale below;' so' always that this prospect be with pity, and 
not with swelling or pride. Certainly it is heaven upon earth 
to have a man's mind move in charity, rest in providence, and 
turn upon the poles of truth. 

To pass from theological and philosophical truth to the 
truth of civil business, it will be acknowledged, even by those 
that practise it not, that clear and round^ dealing is the honour 
of man's nature, and that mixture of falsehood is like alloy in 
coin of gold and silver, wdiich may make the metal work the 
better, but it embaseth^ it ; for these winding and crooked 
courses are the goings of the serpent, which goeth basely upon 
the belly, and not upon the feet. There is no vice that doth 
so cover a man with shame as to be found false and per- 
iidions ; and therefore Montaigne saith prettily, when he in- 
quired the reason why the word of the lie should be such a 
disgrace, and such an odious charge, ' If it be well weighed, to 
saj'^ that a man lieth, is as much as to say that he is brave 
towards God, and a coward towards man ; for a lie faces God, 
and shrinks from man,'* Surely the wickedness of falsehood 
and breach of faith cannot possibly be so highly expressed as in 
that it shall be the last peal to call the judgments of God upon 
the generations of men : it being foretold, that when ' Christ 
com'eth,' he shall not ' find faith upon earth.' 



* So. Provided. 

' So that the doctrine be wholesome and edifying, a want of exactness in the 
manner of speech may be overlooked.' — Atterbury. 

■ Round. Flam ; fair, candid. 

' I will a round, unvarnished tale AaWxav.'—Shalcespcre. 

' Embase. To vitiate ; to alloy. 

' A pleasure, high, rational, and angelic; a pleasure emhased by no appendant 
sting.' — South. 

* Essais, Liv. ii. chap, xviii. 



Of Ti-u(h. [Essay 



ANNOTATIONS. 

* WJiat is truth f saidjedi7ig Pilate^ and woidd not dcnj for 
an answer.^ 

Any one of Bacon's aciiteness, or of a quarter of it, might 
easily liave perceived, had lie at all attended to the context of 
the narrative, that never was any one less in a jesting mood 
than Pilate on this occasion. He was anxious to release Jesus ; 
which must Iiave been from a knowledge of the superhuman 
powers of Ilim he had to do with. A man so unscrupulous 
as Pilate is universally admitted to have been, could not have 
felt any anxiety merely from a dislike of injustice ; and there- 
fore his conduct is one confirmation of the reality of the nu- 
merous miracles Jesus wrought. They, and they only, must 
have filled him with dread of the consequences of doing any 
wrong to such a person, and probably, also, inspired him with 
a hope of furthering some ambitious views of his own, by 
taking part with one whom he (in common with so many 
others) expected to be just about to assume temporal dominion, 
and to enforce his claim by resistless power. He tries to make 
Him proclaim Himself a Iving ; and when Jesus does this, but 
adds that his kingdom is not of this world, still Pilate catches 
at the word, and says, 'Art thou a king, then?' Jesus then 
proceeds to designate tvTw should be his subjects: 'Every one 
that is of the Truth heareth my words: as much as to say, 'I 
claim a kingdom not over the Israelite by race ; not over all 
whom I can subjugate by force, or who will submit to me 
through fear or interest ; but over the votaries of tridh,— those 
who are ' of the truth,' ' — those who are willing to receive what- 
ever shall be proved true, and to follow vjherever that shall 
lead. And Pilate is at a loss to see what this has to do with 
his inquiry. 'I am asking you about your claims to empire, 
and you tell me about truth : what has truth to do with the 
question V 

Most readers overlook the drift of our Lord's answer, and 
interpret the words as a mere assertion (which every teacher 
makes) of the truth of what He taught ; as if He had said, 
'Every one that heareth my words is of the Trath.' 



Essay :.] A7inotations. 5 

And commcntatoi-s usual] j satisfy themselves witli sueli an 
interpretation as makes the expression intelligible in itself, 
without considering how far it is j)erti?ient. A mere assertion 
of the truth of his teaching would not have been at all relevant 
to the inquirv made. But what He did say was evidently a 
description of the persons who were to be the subjects of the 
kingdom that 'is not of this world.' 

Much to the same eifect is his declaration that those who 
should be his disciples indeed should 'know the Truth,' and the 

* Truth should make them free ;' and that ^if any man will do' 
[is willing to do] ' the will of the Father, he shall know of 
the doctrine.' Men were not to become his disciples in conse- 
quence of their knowing and perceiving the truth of wliat He 
taught, but in consequence of their having sufficient candour 
to receive the evidence which his miracles aiforded, and being 
so thoroughly ' of the Truth' as to give themselves up to follow 
wherever that should lead, in opposition to any prejudices or 
inclinations of their own; and then knowledge of the truth 
was to be their reward. There is not necessarily any moral 
virtue in receiving truth ; for it may happen that our interest, 
or our wishes, are in the same direction; or it may be forced 
upon us by evidence as irresistible as that of a mathematical 
demonstration. The virtue consists in being a sincere votary of 
Truth; — what our Lord calls being 'of the Truth,' — ^i-ejecting 

* the hidden things of dishonesty,' and carefully guarding against 
every undue bias. Every one wishes to have Truth on his side; 
but it is not every one that sincerely wishes to be on the side 
of Truth. 

' The inquiry of tnith, which is the love-maldng or 
wooing of it.^^ 

This love-making or wooing of Truth implies that first step 
towards attaining the establishment of the habit of a steady 
thorough-going adherence to it in all philosophic, and espe- 
cially religious, inquiry — the strong conviction of its value. To 
this must be united a distrust of ourselves. Men miss truth 



* The chief part of what follows, I have taken the liberty to extract from the 
JEsaai/ on Truth (2d Series). 



6 Of Truth. [Essaji. 

more often from tlieir indifference about it than from intellec- 
tual incapacity. A well-known statesman is reported to have 
said that ' no gentleman would ever change his religion.' And 
this sentiment (which implies a total inditference to truth and 
falsehood) has been cited with approbation. 

Some men, again, from supposing themselves to have found 
truth, take for granted that it was for truth they were seeking. 
But if we either care not to be lovers of Truth, or take for 
granted that we are such, without taking any pains to acquire 
the habit, it is not likely that we ever shall acquire it. 

Many objections have been urged against the very effort to 
cultivate such a habit. One is, that we cannot be required to 
make Truth our main object, but Jiapjnness ; that our ultimate 
end is not the mere knowledge of what is true, but the attain- 
ment of what is good to ourselves and to others. But this, 
when urged as an objection to the maxim, that Truth should be 
sought for its own sake, is evidently founded on a mistake as 
to its meaning. It is evident, in the first place, that it does 
not mean the pursuit of all truth on all subjects. It would be 
ridiculous for a single individual to aim at universal knowledge, 
or even at the knowledge of all that is within the reach of the 
human faculties and worthy of human study. The question is 
respecting the pursuit of truth in each subject on which each 
person desires to 7nahe up his inind and form an opinion. And 
secondly, the purport of the maxim that in these points truth 
should be our object, is, that not mere barren knowledge with- 
out practice — truth without any ulterior end, should be sought, 
but that truth should be sought and followed confidently, not 
in each instance, only so far as we perceive it to be expedient, 
and from motives of policy, but with a full conviction both that 
it is, in the end, always expedient, with a view to the attain- 
ment of ulterior objects (no permanent advantage being attain- 
able by departing from it), and also, that, even if some end, 
otherwise advantageous, could be promoted by such a departure, 
that alone would constitute it an evil ; — that truth, in short, is 
in itself, independently of its results, preferable to error ; that 
honesty claims a preference to deceit, even without taking into 
account its being the best policy. 

Another objection, if it can be so called, is that a perfectly 
candid and unbiassed state of mind — a habit of judging in each 



Essay i.] Annotatiotis. 7 

case entirely according to tlie evidence — is urmttaincMe, But 
the same may be said of every other virtue : a perfect regula- 
tion of any one of the human passions is probably not more 
attainable than perfect candour ; but we are not therefore to 
give a loose to the passions : we are not to relax our eflbrts for 
the attainment of any virtue on the ground that, after all, we 
shall fall short of perfection. 

Another objection which has been urged is, that it is not 
even desirable, were it possible, to bring the mind into a state 
of perfectly unbiassed indifference, so as to weigh the evidence 
in each case with complete impartiality. This objection arises, 
I conceive, from an indistinct and confused notion of the sense 
of the terms employed. A candid and unbiassed state of mind, 
which is sometimes called mdifferenoe^ or impartiality, i. e.^ of the 
judgment^ does not iniply an indifference of the will — an absence 
of all wish on either side, but merely an absence of all influence 
of the wishes in forming our decision, — all leaning of the judg- 
ment on the side of inclination, — all perversion of the evidence 
in consequence. That we should wish to find truth on one side 
rather than the other, is in many cases not only unavoidable, 
but commendable ; but to think that true which we wish, with- 
out impartially weighing the evidence on both sides, is undeni- 
ably a folly, though a very common one. K a mode of effectual 
and speedy cure be proposed to a sick man, he cannot but wish 
that the result of his inquiries concerning it may be a well- 
grounded conviction of the safety and efhcacy of the remedy 
prescribed. It would be no mark of wisdom to be indifferent 
to the restoration of health ; but if his wishes should lead him 
(as is frequently the case) to put implicit confidence in the 
remedy without any just grounds for it, he would deservedly 
be taxed with folly. 

In like manner (to take the instance above alluded to), a good 
man will indeed wish to find the evidence of the Christian 
religion satisfactory, but will weigh the evidence the more care- 
fully, on account of the importance of the question. 

But indifference of the will and indifference of \\\q judgment 
are two very distinct things that are often confounded. A 
conclusion may safely be adopted, though in accordance with 
inclination, provided it be not founded upon it. No doubt the 
judgment is often biassed by the inclinations; but it is possible, 



8 Of Truth. [Essay i. 

and it slionld be our endeavour, to guard against tliis bias. 
And by the way, it is utterly a mistake to suppose that the 
bias is always in favour of the conclusion wished for ; it is often 
in the contrary direction. There is in some minds an unrea- 
sonable doubt in cases where their wishes are strong — a morbid 
distrust of evidence which they are especially anxious to find 
conclusive. Tlie proverbial expression of ' too good news to be 
true' bears witness to the existence of this feeling. Each of us 
j)robably has a nature leaning towards one or the other (often 
towards both, at different times) of these infirmities; — ^the over- 
estimate or under-estimate of the reasons in favour of a conclu- 
sion we earnestly desire to find true. Our aim should be, not 
to fly from one extreme to the other, but to avoid both, and to 
give a verdict according to the evidence, preserving the indifte- 
rence of the judgment even when the will cannot, and indeed 
sh&iild not, be indiiferent. 

Tliere are persons, again, who, in supposed compliance with 
the precept, ' Lean not to thine own understanding,' regard it 
as a duty to suppress all exercise of the intellectual powers, in 
every case where the feelings are at variance with the conclu- 
sions of reason. They deem it right to ' consult the heart more 
than the head ;' that is, to surrender themselves, advisedly, to 
the bias of any prejudice that may happen to be present ; thus 
deliberately, and on principle, burying in the earth the talent 
entrusted to them, and hiding under a bushel the candle that 
God has lighted up in the soul. But it is- not necessary to 
dwell on such a case, both because it is not, I trust, a common 
one, and also because those who are so disposed are clearly 
beyond the reach of argument, since they think it wrong to 
listen to it. 

It is not intended to recommend presumptuous inquiries into 
things beyond the reach of our faculties, — attempts to be wise 
above what is written, — or groundless confidence in the cer- 
tainty of our conclusions ; but unless reason be employed in 
ascertaining what doctrines are revealed, humility cannot be 
exercised in acquiescing in them ; and there is surely at least 
as much presumption in measuring everything by our own 
feelings, fancies, and prejudices, as by our own reasonings. 
Such voluntary humiliation is. a prostration, not of ourselves 
before God, but of one part of ourselves before another part, 



i.] Annotations. 9 

and resembles the idolatry of the Israelites in the wilderness : 
'The people stripped themselves of their golden ornaments, 
and cast them into the fire, and there came out this calf.' We 
ought to remember that the disciples were led by the dictates of 
a sound understanding to say, ' No man can do these miracles 
that thou doest, except God be with him ;' and thence to believe, 
and trust, and obey Jesus implicitly ; but that Peter was led by 
his heart (that is, his inclinations and prejudices) to say, 'Be 
it far from thee, Lord ! there shall no such thing happen unto 
thee.' 

It is to be remembered also that the intellectual powers are 
sometimes pressed into the service, as it were, of the feelings, 
and that a man may be thus misled, in a great measure, through 
his own ingenuity. ' Depend on it,' said a^hrewd observer,'when 
inquired of, what was to be expected from a certain man who 
had been appointed to some high office, and of whose intelligence 
he thought more favourably than of his uprightness, — ' depend 
on it, he will never take any step that is bad, without having a 
'very good reason to give for it.' Now it is common to warn 
men — and they are generally ready enough to take the warning 
— against being thus misled by the ingenuity of anotJier , but a 
person of more than ordinary learning and ability needs to be 
carefully on his guard against being misled by Ids oivn. 
Tliough conscious, perhaps, of his own power to dress up spe- 
ciously a bad cause, or an extravagant and fanciful theory, he 
is conscious also of a corresponding power to distinguish sound 
reasoning from sophistry. But this will not avail to protect 
him from convincing himself by ingenious sophistry of his own, 
if he has allo'VYed himself to adopt some conclusion which pleases 
his imagination, or favours some passion or self-interest. His 
own superior intelligence will then be, as I have said, pressed 
into the service of his inclinations. It is, indeed, no feeble 
blow that will suffice to destroy a giant ; but if a giant resolves 
to commit suicide, it is a giant that deals the blow. 

"When, however, we have made up our minds as to the im- 
portance of seeking in every case for truth with an unprejudiced 
mind, the greatest difficulty still remains ; which arises from 
the confidence we are apt to feel that we have already done this, 
and have sought for truth with success. For every one must of 
course be convinced of the truth of his own opinion, if it be 



10 Of Truth. [Essay i. 

properly called his opinion; and yet the variety of men's 
opinions furnishes a proof how many must be mistaken. If 
any one, then, would guard against mistake, as far as his intel- 
lectual faculties will allow, he must make it the first question 
in each, ' Is this true V It is not enough to believe what you 
maintain ; you must maintain what you believe, and maintain 
it hecause you believe it ; and that, on the most careful and 
impartial view of the evidence on both sides. For any one may 
bring himself to believe almost anything that he is inclined to 
believe, and thinks it becoming or expedient to maintain. Some 
persons, accordingly, who describe themselves — in one sense, 
correctly — as '-following the dictates of conscience,' are doing so 
only in the same sense in which a person who is driving in a 
carriage may be saidio/bZZciw his horses, which go in whatever 
direction he guides them. It is in a determination to ' obey 
the truth,' and to follow wherever she may lead, that the 
genuine love of truth consists; and this can be realized in 
practice only by postponing all other questions to that which 
ought ever to come foremost — ' AVhat is the truth V If this 
question be asked only in the second place, it is likely to receive 
a very diflerent answer from what it would if it had been asked 
in the first place. Tlie minds of most men are preoccupied by 
some feeling or other which influences their judgment (either 
on the side of truth or of error, as it may happen) and enlists 
their learning and ability on the side, whatever it may be, 
which they are predisposed to adopt. 

I shall merely enumerate a few of the most common of 
these feelings that present obstacles to the pursuit or propaga- 
tion of truth : — Aversion to doubt — desire of a supposed happy 
medium — the love of system — the dread of the character of in- 
consistency — the love of novelty — the dread of innovation — 
undue deference to human authority — the love of approbation, 
and the dread of censure — regard to seeming expediency. 

The greatest of all these obstacles to the habit of following 
truth is the last mentioned — the tendency to look, in the first 
instance, to the expedient. It is this principle that influences 
men to the reservation, or to the (so-called) development, but 
real depravation, of truth ; and that leads to pious frauds in 
one or other of the two classes into which they naturally fall, of 
positive and negative — the one, the introduction and propagation 



i,] Annotations. 11 

of what is false ; the other, the mere toleration of it. He who 
propagates a delusion, and he who connives at it when already 
existing, both alike tamper with truth. We must neither lead 
nor leave men to mistake falsehood for truth. Not to unde- 
ceive, is to deceive. The giving, or not correcting, false reasons 
for right conclusions — false grounds for right belief — ^false prin- 
ciples for right practice ; the holding forth or fostering false 
consolations, false encouragements, and false sanctions, or con- 
niving at their being held forth or believed, are all pious frauds. 
This springs from, and it will foster and increase, a want of 
veneration for truth ; it is an aftront put on ' the Spirit of 
Truth :' it is a hiring of the idolatrous Syrians to fight the 
battles of the Lord God of Israel. And it is on this ground 
that we should adhere to the most scrupulous fairness of state- 
ment and argument. lie who believes that sophistry will 
always in the end prove injurious to the cause supported by it, 
is probably right in that belief ; but if it be for that reason that he 
abstains from it, — if he avoid fallacy, wholly or partly, through 
fear of detection^ — it is plain he is no sincere votary of truth. 

It may be added that many who would never bring them- 
selves to say anything positively false, yet need to be Avarned 
against tjie falsehood of suppression or extenuation ; — against 
the unfairness of giving what is called a one-sided represen- 
tation. Among writers (whether of argumentative works or 
of fictions), even such as are far from wholly unscrupulous, 
there are many who seem to think it allowable and right to set 
forth all the good that is on one side, and all the evil on the 
other. They compare together, and decide on, the gardens of 
A and of B, after having culled from the one a nosegay of the 
choicest flowers, and from the other all the weeds they could 
spy. And tliose who object to this, are often regarded as 
trimmers, or lukewarm, or inconsistent. But to such as deal 
evenhanded justice to both sides, and lay down Scylla and 
Charybdis in the same chart, — to them, and, generally speak- 
ing, to them only, it is given to find that the fair course, which 
they have pursued hecause it is the fair course, is also, in the 
long run, the most expedient. 

On the same principle, we are bound never to countenance 
any erroneous opinion, however seemingly beneficial in its re- 
sults — never to connive at any salutary delusion (as it may ap- 



12 Of TriiiL [Essay i. 

pear), but to open the eyes (when opportunity offers, and in 
proportion as it offers) of those we are instructing, to any mis- 
take they may labour under, though it may be one which leads 
them ultimately to a true result, and to one of which they 
might otherwise fail. The temptation to depart from this prin- 
ciple is sometimes excessively strong, because it will often be 
the case that men will be in some danger, in parting with a 
long-admitted error, of abandoning, at the same time, some 
truth they have been accustomed to connect with it. Accord- 
ingly, censures have been passed on the endeavours to enlighten 
the adherents of some erroneous Churches, on the ground that 
many of them thence become atheists, and many, the wildest 
of fanatics. That this should have been in some instances the 
case is highly probable ; it is a natural result of the pernicious 
effects on the mind of any system of blind, uninquiring acqui- 
escence ; such a system is an Evil Spirit, which we must expect 
will cruelly rend and mangle the patient as it comes out of 
him, and will leave him half dead at its departure. There will 
often be, and oftener appear to be, danger in removing a mis- 
take ; the danger that those who have been long used to act 
rightly on erroneous principles may fail of the desired conclu- 
sions when undeceived. Li such cases it requires a thorough 
lovd of truth, and a firm reliance on divine support, to adhere 
steadily to the straiglit course. If we give way to a dread of 
danger from the inculcation of any truth, physical, moral, or 
religious, we numifest a want of faith in God's power, or in the 
M'ill to maintain his own cause. There may be danger attend- 
ant on every truth, since there is none that may not be per- 
verted by some, or that may not give offence to others ; but, in 
the Ciise of anything which plainly appears to be truth, every 
danger must be braved. We must maintain the truth as we 
have received it, and trust to Ilini who is ' the Truth ' to prosper 
and defend it. 

That we shall indeed best further his cause by fearless per- 
severance in an open and straight course I am firmly persuaded ; 
but it is not only when we perceive the mischiefs of falsehood 
and disguise, and the beneficial tendency of fairness and can- 
dour, that we are to be foUowei-s of truth ; the trial of our faith 
is w^hen we camiot perceive this ; and the part of a lover of Truth 
is to follow her at all seeming hazards, after the example of 



Essay i.] Annotations. 13 

Him who ' came into tlie world that he should bear witnees to 
the Trutli.' This Btraightforward course may not, indeed, 
obtain ' the praise of men.' Courage, liberality, activity, and 
other good qualities, are often highly prized by those who do 
not possess them in any great degree ; but the zealous, thorough- 
going love of truth is not very much admired or liked, or indeed 
understood, except by those who possess it. But Truth, as 
Bacon says, 'only doth judge itself,' and, 'howsoever these 
things are in men's depraved judgn]ients and affections, it teacheth 
that the inquiry of Trnth, which is the love-making or wooing 
of it — the knowledge of Trnth, which is the presence of it — and 
the belief of Trnth, which is the enjoying of it — is the sovereign 
good of human nature.' 

' Tliere is no vice that doth so cover a man ivith shaine^ as to he 
found false and jperfidtoas.'' 

Tliis holds good when falsehood \% practised solely for a 
man's private advantage : but, in a zealous and able partisan, 
falsehood in the cause of the party will often be pardoned, and 
even justiiied. We have lived to see the system called '•jphe- 
ndkism^ '- douhle-doctrine^ or ^economy J — ^that is, saying some- 
thing quite different from what is inwardly believed,^ not only 
practised, but openly avowed and vindicated, and those who 
practise it held up as models of pre-eminent holineSvS, not only 
by those of their own party, but by others also. 

"When men who have repeatedly brought forw^ard, publicly, 
heavy charges against a certain Church, afterwards openly 
declare that those charges were what they knew, at the time^ to 
be quite undeserved, they are manifestly proclaiming their own 
insincerity. Perhaps they did believe— and perhaps they believe 
still — that those charges are just ; and if so, their present 
disavowal is a falsehood. But if, as they now profess, the 
charges are wdiat they believed to be calumnious falsehoods, 
uttered because the same things had heen said Ijy some eminent 
divines, and because they were '■ necessary for our position'' then, 
they confess themselves ' false and perfidious ;' and yet they 
are not ' covered with shame.' 



'See an excellent discourae on 'Reserve/ by Archdeacon West. See .also 
Cautions for the Times, No. xiii. 



ESSAY II. OF DEATH. 

MEN fear death as cliildren fear to go into tlie dark ; and 
as that natural fear in chihiren is increased with tales, 
so is the other. Certainly, the contemplation of death, as the 
wages of sin, and passage to another world, is holy and reli- 
gions ; bnt the fear of it, as a tribute due unto nature, is weak. 
Yet in religious meditations there is sometimes mixture of 
vanity and of superstition. You shall read in some of the 
friars' books of mortification, that a man should think with 
himself what the pain is, if he have but his finger's end 
pressed, or tortured, and thereby imagine what the pains of 
death ^re when the whole body is corrupted and dissolved ; 
when many times death passeth with less pain than the torture 
of a limb — for the most vital parts are not the quickest of 
sense : and by him that spake only as a philosopher and natural 
man, it was well said, ' Pompa mortis magis terret quam mors 
ipsa.'^ Groans, and convulsions, and a discoloured face, and 
friends weeping, and blacks, and obsequies, and the like, show 
death terrible. 

It is worthy the observing, that there is no passion in the 
mind of man so weak, bnt it mates^ and masters the fear of 
death ; and therefore death is no such terrible enemy when 
a man hath so many attendants about him that can win 
the combat of him. Revenge triumphs over death : love 
slights it ; honour aspireth to it ; grief flieth to it ; fear 
pre-occupateth^ it ; nay, we read, after Otho the emperor 
had slain himself, pity (which is the tenderest of affections) pro- 



' The pomp of death is more terrible than death itself.' Probably suggested 
by a letter of Seneca to Lucilius, 24. 
^ Mate. To subdue ; vanquish ; overpower. 

' The Frenchmen he hath so mated, 
And their courage abated. 
That they are but half men.' — Skelton. 
' My sense she has mated.' — Shakespere, 
So to give c\\&ck-mate. 
• Preoecupate. To anticipate. 

' To provide so tenderly by preoccupation, 
As no spider may suck poison out of a rose.' — Garnet, 



Essay ii.] Of Death 15 

voked' many to die out of mere compassion to tlieir sovereign, 
and as the truest sort of followers. Nay, Seneca adds, niceness 
and satiety : ' Cogita quamdiu eadem feceris ; mori velle, nontan- 
tum fortis, ant miser, sed etiam fastidiosus potest.'^ ' A man 
would die, though he were neither valiant nor miserable, only 
upon a weariness to do the same thing so oft over and over.' It 
is no less worthy to observe, how little alteration in good spirits 
the approaches of death make ; for they appear to be the same 
men till the last instant. Augustus Caesar died in a compli- 
ment: 'Li via, conjugii nostri memor vive, et vale.'^ Tiberius 
in dissimulation, as Tacitus saith of him, ' Jam Tiberium vires 
et corpus, non dissimulatio, deserebant :'* Yespasian in a jest 
sitting upon the stool, 'Ut puto Deus fio:' Galba with a 
sentence, Teri, si ex re sit populi Romani,'^ holding forth his 
neck: Septimus Severus in dispatch, 'Adeste, si quid mihi' 
restat agendum,® and the like. Certainly the Stoics bestowed 
too much cost upon death, and by their great preparations made 
it appear more fearful. Better, saith he, ' qui finem vitse ex- 
tremum inter munera ponat naturae.'^ It is as natural to die 
as to be born ; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as 
painful as the other. He that dies in an earnest pursuit is 
like one that is wounded in hot blood ; who, for the time, scarce 
feels the hurt ; and therefore a mind fixed and bent upon some- 
what that is good, doth avert the dolours" of death : but, above 
all, believe it, the sweetest canticle is, ' j^unc dimittis,'^ when a 
man hath obtained worthy ends and expectations. Death hath 
this also, that it openeth the gate to good fame, and extin- 
guisheth envy : ' Extinctus amabitur idem.'^" 



' Pros'oke. To ex'ite ; to move (to exertion or feeling of any kind, not as now, 
merely to anger). ' Your zeal hath provoked very many.' — 2 Cor. ix. 2. 
" Ad Lucil. 77. 
^ ' Livia mindful of owt wedlock, live, and farewell.' — Suefonius, Aug. Vit. c. 100. 

* His powers and bodily strength had abandoned Tiberius, but not his dissimu- 
lation.' — Aniial. vi. 50. 

* ' Strike, if it be for the benefit of the Roman people.' — Tacit. Hut. i. 41. 

* ' Hasten, if anything remains for me to do.' — Bio Cas. 76, ad fin. 

' ' He who accounts the close of life among the boons of nature.' — Juv. Sat. 357. 

* Dolours. Pains. 

'He drew the dolours from the wounded part.' — Pope's Homer. 
' ' Now lettest thou thy servant depart.' — Luke ii. 29, 
*° The same man shall be beloved when dead. 



U Of Death. 



ANTITHETA ON DEATIL 
Pro. Contra. 

'Noninvenias inter humanosafFectum 'Pnestat ad omnia, etiam ad virtu- 

tam pusilhim, qui si intendatur paulo tem, curriculum longura, quam breve, 
vehementius, non mortis metum superet. ' In all things, even in virtue, a long 

' There is no human passion so weak race is more conducive to success than a 
and contemptible, that it may not easily short one.' 
be so heightened as to overcome the fear 

ofdeallC 'Absqiie spatiis vitse majoribus, nee 

perfieere datur, nee' perdiscere, nee 
poenitere. 

' It is only in a long life, that time is 
-~ afforded us to complete anything, to 
learn anything thoroughly, or to reform 
oneself 



ANNOTATIONS. 

' There is no passion hi the mind of man so vjealc hut it mates 
and masters the fear of death.'' 

Of all the instances that can be given of recTvlessness of life, 
there is none that comes near that of the workmen employed 
in what is called c^ry-pointing ; the grinding of needles and of 
table-forks. The fine steel-dust whicli they breathe brings on a 
painful disease of which they are almost sure to die before forty. 
And yet not only are men tempted by high wages to engage in 
this employment, but they resist to the utmost all the con- 
trivances devised for diminishing the danger ; through fear that 
this would cause more workmen to offer themselves, and thus 
lower wages I 

Tlie case of sailors, soldiers, miners, and others who engage 
in hazardous employments, is nothing in comparison of this ; 
because people of a sanguine temper hope to escape the dangers. 
But the dry-pointers have to encounter, not the nVj, but the 
certainty^ of an early and painful death. Tlie thing would seem 
incredible, if it were not so fully attested. All this proves that 
avarice overcomes the fear of death. And so may vanity : witness 
the many women who wear tight dresses, and will even emjjloy 
washes for the complexion which they know to be highly dan- 
gerous and even destructive to their health. 



Essay ii.] Annotations. 17 

* Certainly the contemplation of death, as the wages of sin and 
the passage to another loorld, is holy and religious^ 

, It is when considered as the passage to another world that 
the conteniphxtion of death becomes holj and religious ; — that 
is, calculated to promote a state of preparedness for our setting 
out on this great voyage, — our departure from this world to 
enter tlie other. It is manifest that those who are engrossed 
with the things that j)ertain to this life alone ; who are devoted 
to worldly pleasure, to worldly gain, honour, or power, are cer- 
tainly not preparing themselves for the passage into another : 
while it is equally manifest that the change of heart, of desires, 
wishes, tastes, thoughts, dispositions, which constitutes a meet- 
ness for entrance into a happy, holy, heavenly state, — the hope 
of whicli can indeed ' mate and master the fear of death,' — 
must take place here on earth ; foi", if not, it will not take place 
after death. 

There is a remarkable phenomenon connected with insect 
life which has often occurred to my mind while meditating on 
the subject of prej)aredness for a future state, as presenting a 
curious analogy. 

Most persons know that every hutterflg (the Greek name for 
which, it is remarkable, is the same that signifies also the Soid, — 
Psyche) comes from a grub or caterpillar ; in the language of 
naturalists called a larva. The last name (which signifies lite- 
rally a mash) was introduced by Linnaeus, because the cater- 
pillar is a kind of outward covering, or disguise, of the future 
butterfly within. For, it has been ascertained by curious micro- 
scopic examination, that a distinct butterfly, only undeveloped 
and not full-grown, is contained within the body of the cater- 
pillar; that this latter has its own organs of digestion, respira- 
tion, Arc, suitable to its larva-life, quite distinct from, and 
independent of, the future butterfly which it encloses. When 
the proper period arrives, and the life of the insect, in this its 
first stage, is to close, it becomes what is called a pupa, enclosed 
in a chrysalis or cocoon (often composed of silk ; as is that of 
the silkworm which supplies us that important article,) and lies 
torpid for a time within this natural cofiin, from whicli it issues, 
at the proper period, as a perfect butterfly. 

But sometimes this process is marred. There is a numerous 
2 



IS Of Death. [Essay il. 

ti'ibe of insects well known to naturalists, called Iclmeumon- 
flies ; which in their larva-state qxq parasitical ^ that is, inhabit, 
and feed on, other larvae. The ichneumon-fly, being provided 
with a long sharp sting, which is in fact an ovipositor (egg- 
layer,) pierces with this the body of a caterpillar in several 
places, and deposits her eggs, which are there hatched, and 
feed, as grubs (larvaj) on the inward parts of their victim. A 
most wonderful circumstance connected with this process is, 
that a caterpillar which has been thus attacked goes on feeding, 
and apparently thriving quite as well, during the whole of its 
larva-life, as those that have escaped. For, by a wonderful 
provision of instinct, the ichneumon-grubs within do not injure 
any of the organs of the larva, but feed only on the future 
butterfly enclosed within it. And consequently, it is hardly 
j^ossible to distinguish a caterpillar which has these enemies 
within it from those that are untouched. — But when the period 
arrives for the close of the larva-life, the difference appears. 
You may often observe the common cJibbage-caterpillars retir- 
ing, to undergo their change, into some sheltered spot, — such as 
the walls of a summer-house ; and some of them — those that 
have escaped the parasites, — assuming the pupa-state, from 
which they emerge, butterflies. Of the unfortunate caterpillar 
that has been preyed upon, nothing remains but an empty skm. 
The hidden butterfly has been secretly consumed. 

]^ow is there not something analogous to this wonderful 
phenomenon, in the condition of some of our race ? — may not 
a man have a kind of secret enemy within his own bosom, 
destroying his soul, — Psyche^ — though without interfering with 
his well-being during the pi^esent stage of his existence ; and 
whose presence may never be detected till the time arrives 
when the last great change should take place ? 

'■Death hath this also, that it openeth the gate to good fame, and 
extinguisheth envy I! 
Bacon might have added, that the generosity extended to 
the departed is sometimes carried rather to an extreme. To 
abstain from censure of them is fair enough. But to make an 
ostentatious parade of the supposed admirable qualities of 
persons who attracted no notice in their life-time, and again 
(which is much more common,) to publish laudatory biographies 



Essay ii.] Annotations. 19 

(to say notbinoj of raiding subscriptions for monumental testi- 
monials) of persons wlio did attract notice in a disreputable way, 
and respecting wliom it would liave been tlie kindest tbing to 
let tbeni be forgotten, — tbis is surely going a little too far. 

But private friends and partisans are tempted to pursue tbis 
course by tbe confidence tbat no one will come forward to con- 
tradict tbem : according to tbe lines of Swift, — 

' De mortuis nil nisi bonum ; 

' When scoundrels die, let all bemoan 'em.' 

Tben, again, tbej-e are some wbo bestow eulogisms tbat are 
really just on persons wbom tliey bad always been accustomed 
to revile, calumniate, tliwart, and persecute on every occasion ; 
and tbis tbey seem to regard as establisbing their own character 
for eminent generosity. Nor are tbey usually mistaken in 
tbeir calculation; for if not absolutely commended for tbeir 
magnanimous moderation, tbey usually escape, at least, tbe 
well-deserved reproach for not having done justice, during his 
life, to the object of their posthumous praises, — for having been 
occupied in opposing and insulting one who — by their own 
showing — deserved quite contrary treatment. 

It may fairly be suspected that the one circumstance respect- 
ing him which tbey secretly dwell on with the most satisfaction, 
though tbey do not mention it, is that he is dead/ and that they 
delight in bestowing tbeir posthumous honours on him, chiefly 
because they are jpostlimnous j according to the concluding 
couplet in the Yerses on the Death of Dean Swift : — 

' And since you dread no further lashes, 
Methinks you may forgive his ashes.' 

But the Public is wonderfully tolerant of any persons who 
will but, in any way, speak favourably of tbe dead, even when 
by so doing they pronounce their own condemnation. 

Sometimes, however, tbe opposite fault is committed. Strong 
party feeling will lead zealous partizans to misrepresent tbe con- 
duct and character of the deceased, or to ignore (according to the 
modern phrase) some of the most remarkable things done by him.' 

But then they generally put in for the praise of generosity 
by eulogizing some very insignificant acts, and thus ' damn with 
faint praise.' 

' See an instance of this alluded to in the Remains of Bishop Copleston, 
p. 89-93. . 



ESSAY m. OF UNITY IN RELIGIOK 

RELIGION being the chief bond of liuman soeietv, it is a 
happy thing when itself is well contained witliin the true 
bond of unity. The cpiai-rels and divisions about religion were 
evils unknown to the heathen. The reason was, because the 
religion of the heathen consisted rather in rites and ceremonies, 
than in any constant belief ; for you may imagine what kind 
of faith theirs was, when the chief doctors* and fathers of tlieir 
church were the poets. But the true God hath this attribute, 
that He is a jealous God ;^ and therefore his worship and reli- 
gion will endure no mixture nor partner. AVe shall therefore 
speak a few words concerning the unity of the Church ; what 
are the fruits thereof ; what the bonds ; and what the means. 

The fruits of unity (next unto the well-pleasing of God, 
which is all in all) are two ; the one towards those that are 
without the Church, the other towards those that are within. 
Tor the former, it is certain that heresies and schisms are of 
all others the greatest scandals, yea, more than corruption of 
manners ; for as in the natural body a wound or solution of 
continuity^ is worse than a corrvipt humour, so in the spiritual : 
so that nothing doth so much keep men out of the Church, and 
drive men out of the Church, as breach of unity ; and, there- 
fore, whensoever it cometh to that pass that one saith, 'Ecce 
in deserto,'* another saith, ' Ecce in penetralibus,'^ — that is, 
when some men seek Christ in the conventicles of heretics, and 
others in an outward face of a church, that voice had need 
continually to sound in men's ears, 'Nolite exire.'^ The Doctor 
of the Gentiles (the propriety^ of whose vocation® drew him to 



' Doctors. Teachers. ' Sitting in tlie midst of the doctors.' — L^ll:e ii. 46. 
" Exodus XX. 5. 

* Solution of continuity. The destruction of the texture, or cohesion of the parts 
of an animal bodi/. ' The solid pai'ts may be contracted by dissolving their con- 
tinuity.' — Arhuthnot. 

^ ' Lo ! in the desert. ^ ' Lo ! in the sanctuary.' — Matt. xxiv. 26. 

* ' Go not out.' * Propriety. Peculiar quality ; property. 

* Vocation. Calling ; state of life and duties of the embraced profession. ' That 
every member of thy holy Chui'ch in his vocation and ministry.' — Collect for Good 
Friday. 



Essay iii.] Of Unity in Eehglon. 21 

have a special care of those without) saith, ' If a heathen come 
in, and hear jou speak with several tongues, will he not sav 
that you are mad?'* and, certainly, it is little better, when 
atheists and profane persons do hear of so many discordant and 
contrary opinions in religion, it doth avert^them from the Church, 
and niaketh them ' to sit down in the chair of the scorners.' 

It is but a light thing to be vouched in so serious a 
matter, but yet it expresseth well the deformity ; there is a 
master of scofSng, that in his catalogue of books of a feigned 
librar}^, sets down this title of a book. The Morris-Dance of 
Heretics ^ for, indeed, every sect of them hath a diverse* pos- 
ture, or cringe,* by themselves, which cannot but move derision 
in worldlings and depraved politics," who are apt to contemn 
holy things. [ 

As for the fruit towards those that are within, it is peace, 
which eontaineth infinite blessings ; it establisheth faith ; it 
kindleth charity; the outward peace of the Church distilleth 
into peace of conscience, aud it turneth the labours of writing 
and reading controversies into treatises of mortification'' and 
devotion. 

Concerning the bonds of unity, the true placing of them 
importeth" exceedingly. There appear to be two extremes ; for 
to certain zealots all speech of pacification is odious. 'Is it 
peace, Jehu V ^ What hast thou to do with peace ? turn thee 

' 1 Cor. sir. 23. 

"Avert. To repel; to turn away. ' Even cut themselves off from all 02)i)ortu- 
nities of proselyting others by overling them from their companj^' — Venn. 
' Rabelaii* Pantag. il 7. 

* Diverse. Differerd. ' Four great beasts came up from the sea, diverse one 
from another.' — Daniel vii. 3. 

* Cringe. A how. Seldom used as a substantive. 

' Far from me 
Be fawning cringe, and false dissembling looks.' — Phillips. 
' He is the new court-god, and well applyes 
With sacrifice of knees, of crooks, and cringe.' — Ben Jonwn. 
' Polities. Politicians. ' That which time severs and politics do for earthly 
advantages, we will do for spiritual' — Bishop Hall. 

' Mortification. Th^ subduing of sinful propensities. (Our modern use never 
occurs in Scripture, where the word always means ' to put to death.' ' You see 
no real mortification, or self-denial, or eminent charity in the common lives of 
Christians.' — Lawe. 

' Import. To he of weight or consequence. 

' What else more serious 
Importeth thee to know — this bears. — Shakespere. 



22 Of Unity in Religion. [Essay iii. 

behind me/* Peace is not the matter, hut following and 
party. Contrariwise, certain Laodiceans and lukewann persons 
think they may accommodate^ points of religion by middle 
ways, and taking part of both, and witty^ reconcilements, as if 
they would make an arbitremenf between God and man. Both 
these extremes are to be avoided \ which will be done if the 
league of Christians, penned by our Saviour Himself, were in 
the two cross clauses thereof soundly and plainly expounded : 
'He that is not with us is against us ;' and again, 'He that is 
not against us is with us ;' that is, if the points fundamental, and 
of substance in religion, were truly discerned and distinguished 
from points not merely^ of faith, but of opinion, order, or good 
intention. This is a thing may seem to many a matter trivial, 
and done already ; but if it were done less partially, it would be 
embraced more generally. 

Of this I may give only this advice, according to my small 
model. Men ought to take heed of rending God's Church by 
two kinds of controversies ; the one is„ when the matter of the 
point controverted is too small and light, nor w^orth the heat and 
strife about it, kindled only by contradiction ; for, as it is noted 
by one of the fathers, Christ's coat indeed had no seam, but the 
Church's vesture was of divers colours ; whereupon he saith, ' Li 
veste varietas sit, scissura non sit,"^ — they be two things, miity, 
and uniformity ; the other is, when the matter of the point 
controverted is great, but it is driven to an over-great subtilty 
and obscurity, so that it becometh a thing rather ingenious than 
substantial. A man that is of judgment and understanding 
shall sometimes hear ignorant men diifer, and know well within 
himself, that those which so differ mean one thing, and yet they 
themselves would never agree ; and if it come so to pass in tliat 
distance of judgment which is between man and man, shall we 

'"^ Ki7igs ix. tg. 

* Accommodate. To reconcile what seems inconsistent. ' Part know how to 
accommodate St. James and St. Paul better than some late reconcilers.' Xorris. 

^ Witty. Ingenious ; inventive. 

' The deep-revolving witty Buckingham.' — Shakespere. 

* Arbitrement. Final decision ; judgment. 

' We of the offending side 
I ]\Iust keep aloof from strict arbitrements.' — Shakespere. 

* Merely. Absolutely; purely ; unreservedly, (from the Latin merus.') , 

' We are merely cheated of our lives by drunkards.' — Shakespeare. 
° ' Let there be variety in the robe, but let there be no rent.' 



Essay iii.] Of Unity m Eellrjmi. 23 

not think tiiat God above, that knows the heart, doth not 
discern that frail men, in some of their contradictions, intend 
the same tiling and accepteth^ of both 1 The nature of such 
controvei-sies is excellently expressed by St Paul, in the warn- 
ing and precept that he giveth concerning the same, ^ Devita 
profanas vocum novitates et oppositiones falsi nominis scientise.'* 
Men create oppositions which are not, and put them into new 
terms so iixed ; as^ whereas the meaning ought to govern the 
term, the term in effect governeth the meaning. 

There be also two false peaces, or unities : tlie one, when the 
peace is grounded but upon an implicit ignorance ; foi^all colours 
will agree in the dark ; the other, when it is pieced up upon a 
direct admission of contraries in fundamental points ; for truth 
and falsehood in such things are like the iron and clay in the 
toes of j^'ebuchadnezzar's image^ — they may cleave but they 
will not incorporate. 

Concerning the means of procuring unity, men must beware, 
that, in the procming or muniting^ of religious unity, they do 
not dissolve and deface the laws of charity and of human 
society. There be two swords amongst Christians, the spiritual 
and the temporal, and both have their due office and place in 
the maintainance of religion ; but we may not take up the third 
sword, which is Mahomet's sword, or like unto it^ — that is, to 
propag-ate religion by wars, or by sanguinary persecutions to 
force consciences — except it be in cases of overt scandal, blas- 
phemy, or intermixture of practice against the state ; much less 
to nourish seditions ; to authorise conspiracies and rebellions ; 
to put the sword into the people's hands, and the like, tending 
to the subversion of all government, which is the ordinance of 



^ Accept of. To approve ; receive favourably. ' I Avill appease him with the 
present that goeth before me, . . . peradventure he -will accept of me.' — Gen. xxxil 
^ ' Avoid profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called.' 
1 Tim. vi. 20. 

' That {denoting consequence). ' The mariners were so conquered by the storm 
«.s they thought it best with stricken sails to yield to be governed by it.' — Sidney. 
* Daniel iu 33. 

■• Muniting. The defending, fortifying. ' By protracting of tyme, King Henry 
might fortify and munite all dangerous places and passages.' — Hall. 
'All that tight against her and her munitions' — Jeremiah xxix. 7. 
' The arm our soldier. 
Our steed the leg, the tongue our trumpeter, 
With other muniments and petty helps.' — Shakespere. 



24- Of Unity in Mdigion. [Etisay iil. 

God ; for tins is but to dasli tlie first table against the second ; 
and so to consider men as Christians, as' we forget that they 
are men, Lucretius the poet, when he behekl the act of Aga- 
memnon, that coukl endure the sacrificing of his own daughter, 
exclaimed : 

' Tantum religio potuit snadere malorum.'* 

Wliat would he have said, if he had known of the massacre in 
France, or the powder treason of England ? He would have 
been seven times niore epicure' and atheist than he was ; for as 
the temporal sword is to be drawn Avith great circumspection in 
cases of religion, so it is a thing monstrous to put it into the 
hands of the common people ; let that be left to the anabaptists 
and other furies. It was great blasphemy wdien the devil said, 
' I will ascend and be like the Highest •* but it is greater 
blasphemy to personate God, and bring Him in saying, ' I will 
descend and be like the prince of darkness :' and what is it 
better, to make the cause of rehgion to descend to the cruel 
and execrable actions of murdering princes, butchery of people, 
and subversion of states and governments ? Surely this is to. 
bring down the Holy Ghost, instead of the likeness of a dove, 
in the shape of a vulture or raven ; and to set out of the bark 
of a christian church, a flag of a bark of pirates and assassins : 
therefore it is most necessary that the Church, by doctrine and 
decree, princes by their sword, and all learning, both christian 
and moral, as by their mercury rod to damn and send to hell 
for ever, those facts and opinions tending to the support of the 
same, as hath been already in good part done. Surely in 
councils concerning religion, that counsel of the apostle should 
be prefixed, ' Ira hominis non implet justitiam Dei ;'^ and it 
was a notable observation of a wise father, and no less in- 
genuously confessed, that those which held and persuaded® 
pressure of consciences, were commonly interested therein 
themselves for their own ends. 



' As. That. See page 23. 

"^ ' So many evils could religion induce.' — Lucret. i. 95. 

' Epicure. Epicurean; a follower of Epicurus. 'Here he describetli the fury 
of the Epicures, which is the highest and deepest mischief of all ; even to con- 
tempne the very God.' * Isaiah xiv. 14. 

^ ' The wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.' — James i. 20. 

* Persuade. To inculcate. ' To children afraid of vain images, we persuade 
confidence by making them handle and look near such things.' — Bishop Taylor. 



Essay iii.] Annotations. 25 

ANNOTATIONS. 

^ It is a ha_p_py thing when Religion is well contained within ths 
true hond of unity. '^ 

It is, therefore, very important to have a clear notion of the 
nature of the christian nnity spoken of in the Scriptures, and 
to understand in what this 'true bond of unity' consists, so 
often alluded to and earnestly dwelt on by our Sacred Writers. 
The unity they speak of does not mean agreement in doctrine^ 
nor yet concord and mutual good will ; though these are strongly 
insisted on by the apostles. Nor, again, does it mean that all 
Christians belong, or ought to belong, to some one society on 
earth. This is what the apostles never aimed at, and what 
never was actually the state of things, from the time that 
the christian religion extended beyond the city of Jerusalem. 
The Church is undoubtedly one, and so is the human race one ; 
but not as a society or community, for, as such, it is only one 
when considered as to its future existence.^ The teaching of 
Scripture clearly is, that believers on earth are part of a great 
society (church or congregation), of which the Head is in 
heaven, and of which many of the members only ' live unto 
God,' or exist in his counsels, — some having long since departed, 
and some being not yet born. The universal Church of Christ 
may therefore be said to be ONE in reference to HIM, its 
supreme Head in heaven; but it is not one community on 
earth. And even so the human race is one in respect of the 
One Creator and Governor ; but this does not make it one 
family or one state. And though all men are bound to live in 
jpeace., and to be kindly disposed towards every fellow creature, 
and all bound to agree in thinking and doing whatever is 
right, yet they are not at all bound to live under one dngle 
government, extending over the whole world. Nor, again, are 
all nations bound to have the same form of government, regal 
or republican, &c. That is a matter left to their discretion. 
But all are bound to do their best to promote the great (Ejects 
for which all government is instituted, — ^good order, justice, and 
public prosperity. 

' Great part of what follows is extracted from a Charge of ?ome years hack. 
* See Bishop Hind's History of the Origin of Christianitii. 



26 Of Unity in Beliglon. [Essay iii. 

And even so the Apostles founded cliristian churches, all 
biased on the same principles, all sharing common privileges, — 
' One Lord, one faith, one baptism,' — and all having the same 
object in view, but all quite independent of each other. And 
while, bj the inspiration of Ilini who knew what was in Man, 
thej delineated those christian principles which Man could not 
have devised for liimself, each Church has been left, by the 
same divine foresight, to make the application of those prin- 
ciples in its symbols, its forms of worship, and its ecclesiastical 
regulations ; and, while steering its course by the chart and 
compass which his holy Word supplies, to regulate for itself 
the sails and rudder, according to the winds and currents it 
may meet with. 

Now, I have little doubt that the sort of variation resulting 
from this independence and freedom, so far from breaking the 
bond, is the best preservative of it. A number of neighbouring 
families, living in perfect unity, will be thrown into discord as 
soon as you compel them to form one lamily, and to observe 
in things intrinsically indifferent, the same rules. One, for 
instance, likes early hours, and another late ; one likes the win- 
dows open, and another shut; and thus, by being brought too 
close together, they are driven into ill-will, by one being per- 
petuall}^ forced to give way to another. Of this character 
w^ere the disputations which arose (though they subsequently 
assumed a different character) about church music, the posture 
of the communicants, the colours of a minister's dress, tlie time 
of keeping Easter, &c. 

This independence of each Church is not to be confounded 
with the error of leaving too nnich to individual discretion of 
the minister or members of each Church. To have absolutely 
no terms of communion at all, — no tests of the fitness of any 
one to be received as a member, or a minister of each Cliurch 
respectively, — would be to renounce entirely the character of a 
christian Church ; since of such a body it is plain that a Jew, 
a Polytheist, or an Atheist might, quite as consistently as a 
Christian, be a member, or even a governor. And though the 
Scriptures, and the Scriptures only, are to be appealed to for a 
decision on questions of doctrine, yet to have (as some have 
wildly proposed) no test of communion but the very words of 
Scripture, would be scarcely less extravagant than having no 



Essay iii.] Annolatiojis. 27 

test at all, since there is no one professing Christianity who 
does not maintain that his sentiments are in accordance with 
the true meaning of Scripture, however absurd or pernicious 
these sentiments may really be. For it is notorious that 
Scripture itself is at least as liable as human formularies (and 
indeed more so) to have forced interpretations put on its 
language. 

Accordingly, there is no Christian community which does 
not, in some way or other, apply some other test besides the 
very words of Scripture. Some Churches, indeed, do not 
reduce any such test to writing, or express it in any fixed 
form, so as to enable every one to know beforehand precisely 
how much he will be required to bind himself to. But, never- 
theless, these Churches do apply a test, and very often a much 
more stringent, elaborate, and minute test than our Liturgy and 
Articles. In such communities, the candidate pastor of a 
congregation is not, to be sure, called on to subscribe in writing 
a definite confession of faith, drawn up by learned and pious 
persons after mature deliberation, and publicly set forth by 
common authority, — but he is called upon to converse with the 
leading members of the congregation, and satisfy them as to the 
soundness of his views ; not, of course, by merely repeating 
texts of Scripture — which a man of any views might do, and do 
honestly ; but by explaining the sense in which he understands 
the Scriptures. Thus, instead of subscribing the Thirty-nine 
Articles^ he subscribes the sentiments of the leading members — 
for the time being — of that particular congregation over which 
he is to be placed as teacher.* 

And thus it is that tests of some kind or other, written or 
unwritten (that is, transmitted by oral tradition), fixed for the 
whole Body, or variable, according to the discretion of par- 
ticular governors, are and must be, used in every Christian 
Church. This is doing no more than is evidently allowable 
and expedient. But it is quite otherwise when any Church, 
by an unwarrantable assumption, requires all who would claim 



' Cautions for the Times, page 451. I have known, accordingly, a minister of a 
continental Protestant Church strongly object to all siibscrijitions to Articles, say- 
ing, that a man should only be called on to profess his belief in Jesus Christ ; and 
yet, a few minutes afterwards, denouncing as a ' Rationalist ' another Protestant 
minister. 



28 Of Unity in RdUjion. [Essay iii. 

the cliristian name to assent to her doctrines and conform to 
her worship, whetlier they approve of them or not, — to renounce 
all exercise of their own judgment, and to profess belief in what- 
ever the Church has received or may hereafter receive. 

* TJie religion of the heathen consisted rather in rites and cere- 
Tnonies than in any constant religious helief. . . . JBitt the 
true God hath this attribute^ &c. 

Bacon here notices the characteristic that distinguishes the 
Chrijstian i-eligion from the religion of the heathen. The reli- 
gion of the heathen not only was not true, but was not even 
supported as true ; it not only deserved no belief, but it 
demanded none. The very pretension to truth — the very 
demand of faith — were characteristic distinctions of Christianity. 
It is Truth resting on evidence, and requiring belief in it, on 
the ground of its truth. The first object, therefore, of the 
adherents of such a religion must be that Truth which its divine 
Author pointed out as defining the very nature of his kingdom, 
of his objects, and of his claims. ' For this cause came I into 
the world, that I might bear witness unto the truth. Every one 
that is of the truth heareth my voice.'^ And if Truth could be 
universally attained. Unity would be attained also, since Truth 
is one. On the other hand. Unity may conceivably be attained 
by agreement in error ; so that while by the universal adbption 
of a right faith, unity would be secured, incidentally, the attain- 
ment of unity would be no security for truth. 

It is in relation to the paramount claim of truth that the 
view we have given of the real meaning of Church Unity in 
Scripture is of so much importance ; for the mistake of repre- 
senting it as consisting in having one community on earth, to 
which all Christians belong, or ought to belong, and to whose 
government all are bound to submit, has led to truth being 
made the secondary, and not the paramount, object. 

AVhat the Romanist means by renouncing ' private judgment' 
and adhering to the decisions of the Church is, substantially, 
what many Protestants express by saying, ' We make truth the 
first and paramount object, and the others, unity? The two 
expressions, when rightly understood, denote the same ; but 



John xviii 37. 



Essay iii.] A7inotatio7is. 29 

they each require some explanation to prevent their heing 
understood incorrectly, and even unfairly. 

A Roman Catholic does exercise private judgment, once for 
all, if (not through cai-elessness, but on earnest and solemn 
deliberation) he resolves to place himself completely under the 
guidance of that Church (as represented by his priest) which he 
judges to have been divinely appointed for that purpose. And 
in so doing he considers himself, not as manifesting indifference 
about truth, but as taking the way by which he will attain 
either complete and universal religious truth, or at least a 
greater amount of it than could have been attained otherwise. 
To speak of such a person as indifferent about truth, would be 
not only uncharitable, but also as unreasonable as to suppose a 
man indifferent about his health, or about his property, because, 
distrusting his own judgment on points of medicine or of law, 
he places himself under the direction of those whom he has 
judged to be the most trustworthy physician and lawyer. 

On the other hand, a Protestant, in advocating private judg- 
ment, does not, as some have represented, necessarily maintain 
that every man should set himself to study and interpret for 
himself the Scriptures (which, we should recollect, are written 
in the Hebrew and Greek languages), A\'ithout seeking or 
accepting aid from any instructors, whether under the title of 
translators (for a translatoi', who claims no inspiration, is, mani- 
festly, a human instructor of the people as to the sense of 
Scripture) or whether called commentators, preachers, or by 
whatever other name. Indeed, considering the multitude of 
tracts, commentaries, expositions, and discourses of various 
forms, that have been put forth and assiduously circulated by 
Protestants of all denominations, for the avowed purpose (be it 
well or ill executed) of giving religious instruction, it is really 
strange that such an interpretation as I have alluded to should 
ever have been put on the phrase ' private judgment.' For, to 
advert to a parallel case of daily occurrence, all would recom- 
mend a student of mathematics, for instance, or of any branch 
of natural j^hilosophy, to seek the aid of a well-qualitled pro- 
fessor or tutor. And yet he would be thought to have studied 
in vain, if he should ever think of taking on trust any mathe- 
matical or physical truth on the word of his instructors. It is, 
on the contrary, their part to teach him lioxo — by demonstration 
or by experiment — to verify each point for himself. 



30 Of Unity in ReUgion. [Essay iii. 

On tlie otlier hand, the adherents of a Church claiming to 
be infalKLle on all essential points, and who, consequently, 
profess to renounce private judgment, these, (besides that, as 
has been just said, they cannot but judge for themselves as to 
one point — that very claim itself) have also room for the exercise 
of judgment, and often do exercise it, on questions as to wliat 
points are essential, and for which, consequently, inlallible 
rectitude is insured.^ For we should be greatlj^ mistaken if we 
were to assume that ail who have opposed what we are ac- 
customed to call Hhe Keformation' were satisfied that there 
was nothing in their Church that needed reform, or were neces- 
sarily indifferent about the removal of abuses. We know that, 
on the contrary, many of them pointed out and complained of, 
and studied to have remedied, sundry corruptions that had 
crept into their Church, and which were, in many instances, 
sanctioned by its highest authorities. 

Sincere, one must suppose, and strong, must have been the 
conviction of several who both did and suffered much in 
labouriug after such remedy. And it would be absurd, as well 
as uncharitable, to take for granted that Erasmus, for instance, 
and, still more, Pascal, and all the/ Jansenists, /were withheld 
merely by personal fear, or other personal motives, from revolt- 
ing against the Church of Rome. But they conceived, no 
doubt, that what they considered Church-Unity was to be pre- 
served at any cost ; that a separation from what they regarded 
as the Catholic (or Universal) Church, was a greater evil than 
all others combined. If, without loss of unity, they could 
succeed in removing any of those other evils, for such a reform 
they would gladly labour. But, if not, to Unity anything and 
everthing was to be sacrificed. 

Such seems to have been the sentiment of a Eomau Catholic 
priest, apparently a man of great simplicity of character, who, 
about three or four years ago, had interviews, at his own desire, 
with several of our bishops. He spoke very strongly of the 
unseemly and lamentable spectacle (and who could not but 
agree with him in thinking it ?) of disunion and contention 



* Thus the Jansenists, when certain doctrines were pronounced heretical by the 
Court of Rome, which condemned Jansenius for maintaining them, admitted, as in 
duty bound, tlie decision that they were heretical, but denied that they were implied 
in Jansenius's writings ; and of this latter point the Pope, they said, was no more 
qualified or authorised to decide than any other man. 



Essay iii.] Annotations. 31 

among Christ's professed followers ; and lie dwelt miicli upon 
the duty of earnestly praying and striving for unity. 

In reference to this point, it was thought needful to remind 
him, that two parties, while apparently agreeing in their prayers 
and endeavours for unity might possibly mean by it different 
things ; the one understanding by it the submission of all 
Christians to the government of one single ecclesiastical com- 
munity on earth ; the other, merely mutual kindness and agree- 
ment in faith. Several passages of Scripture were pointed out 
to him, tending to prove that the churches founded by the 
Apostles were all quite independent of each other, or of any one 
central Body,^ though all were exhorted to ' keep the unity of 
the spirit in the bond of peace.' Such unity, he was reminded 
(for he was formerly a minister of our Church), is the subject of 
a special petition in our Prayer for all Conditions of Men ^ and 
in several others. 

It was remarked to him, that Truth had a paramount claim 
to be the first object ; and that since Truth is one, all who reach 
Truth'will reach Unity ; but that men may, and often do, gain 
Unity without truth. 

He was reminded, moreover, that agreement among Chris- 
tians, though an object we should wish for, and endeavour by 
all allowable means to promote, must, after all, depend on others 
as much as on ourselves ; and our endeavour may be com- 
pletely defeated through their fault : wdiereas truth is a benefit — 
and a benefit of the first importance — to those who receive it 
themselves, even though they should have to lament its rejection 
by many others. 

And it was pointed out to him, that to pray and strive for 
truth, and to be ever open to conviction, does not (as he seemed 
to imagine) imply a wavering faith, and an anticipation of 
change. When any one prints from moveable types, this does 
not imply that he has committed, or that he suspects, typogra- 



' To one among the many passages whicli go to prove this, I directed his espe- 
cial attention ; that in ^'hich Paul's final interview (as he believed it) with the elders 
of Miletus and Ephesus is recorded {Acts xx.) Foreseeing the dangers to which 
they would be exposed, even from false teachers amongst themselves, and of which 
he had been earnestly warning them for three years, it is inconceivable that he 
should not have directed them to Peter or his successors at Rome or elsewhere, if 
lie had known of any central supreme Church, provided as an infallible guide, to 
■whose decisions they might safely refer when doubts or disputes should arise. It 
follows therefore inevitablj- that he knew of none. 



32 Of Unity in Beligion. [Essay iii. 

pliical errors, any more than if lie had employed an engramd 
plate. The types are not moveable in the sense of being loose 
and liable to casual change. He may be challenging all the 
world to point out an error, showing that any can be corrected 
if they do detect one ; though, perhaps, he is fully convinced 
that there are none. 

He was, in conclusion, reminded that ' no man can serve 
two masters ;' not because they are necessarily opposed^ but 
because they are not necessarily combined, and cases may arise 
iw. which the one must give way to the other. There is no 
necessary opposition even between ' God and Mammon,' if by 
' Mammon' we understand worldly prosperity. For it will 
commonly happen that a man will thrive the better in the 
world from the honesty, frugality, and temperance which he 
may be practising from higher motives. And there is not even 
anything necessarily wrong in aiming at temporal advantages. 
But whoever is resolved on obtaining wealth in one way or 
another (' si possis, recte ; si non, quocunque modo, rem') will 
occasionally be led to violate duty ; and he, again, who is fully 
bent on ' seeking first the kingdom of God and his righteous- 
ness,' will sometimes find himself called on to incur temporal 
losses. And so it is with the occasionally rival claims of Truth 
and of Unity, or of any two objects which may possibly be, in 
some instance, opposed. We must make up our minds which 
is, in that case, to give w^ay. One must be the supreme, — must 
be the ' master.' 

' Either he will love the one and hate the other.' This 
seems to refer to cases in which a radical op]30sition between 
the two does exist : ' or else he will cleave to the one, 
and despise {i. e. disregard and neglect) the other.' Tliis 
latter seems to be the description of those cases in which 
there is no such necessary opposition ; only, that cases will 
sometimes arise in which the one or the other must be dis- 
regarded. 

* When Atheists and profane persons do hear of so many and 
contrary opinions in religion^ it doth avert them from the 
Church^ 

Tliere occurs in a late number oi a leading periodical a 
remark, which one may find also in the mouths of many, and 



Essay iii.] Annotations. SB 

in the minds of very many more, — that the great diversity of 
religions opinions prevailing in the world, and the absence of all 
superhuman provision against them, is a proof that it is the will 
of the Almighty that such should be the case, — that men were 
designectio hold all diversities of religious belief. Now, the 
inference which will naturally be drawn, on further reflection, 
from this is, that it is no matter whether we hold truth or false- 
hood ; and next, that there is no truth at all in any religion. 

But this is not all. The same reasoning would go to prove 
that since there is no infallible and universally accessible guide 
in morals^ and men greatly diifer in their judgments of what is 
morally right and wrong, hence we are to infer that God did 
not design men to agree on this point neither, and that it 
matters not whether we act on right or wrong principles ; and, 
in short, tliat there is no such thing as right and wrong ; but 
only what each man thinks. The two opposite errors, from the 
same source^ are, ' If God wills all men to believe, and to act, 
rightly, He must have given us an infallible and accessible 
guide for belief and practice. (1.) But He does so will ; there- 
fore, there is such a guide : and (2.) He has 7iot given us any 
such guide ; therefore. He does not will all men to believe and 
act rightly.' 

Now, this is to confound the two senses of "WILL, as dis- 
tinguished in the concluding paragraph of the 17th Article of 
the Church of England. In a certain sense, the most absurd 
errors, and the most heinous crimes, may be said to be accord- 
ing to the divine Will : since God does not interpose his omni- 
potence to prevent them. But 'in our doings,' says that 
Article, 'that Will of God is to be followed which we have 
expressly declared in Holy Writ." 

' It is certain^ that heresies and schisms are, of all others, the 

greatest scandals.'' 
' Nothing doth so much }:ee/p men out of the Church, and drive 

men out of the Church, as breach of unity ^ 

If proof of the truth of Bacon's remark were needed, it 

might be found in the fact, that among the more immediate 

causes of the stationary, or even receding, condition of the 

Reformation, for nearly three centuries, — a condition so strangely 

3 



34 Of Unity i?i JReligion. [Essay iii. 

at variance with the anticipations excited in both friends and 
foes by its iirst rapid advance, — the one which has been most 
frequently remarked npon is the contentions among. Protestants, 
who, soon after the first outbreak of the revolt from Rome, began 
to expend the chief part of their energies in contests with each 
other f and often showed more zeal, and even fiercer hostility, 
against rival-Protestants, than against the systems and the 
principles which they agreed in condemning. Tlie adherents 
of the Church of Rome, on the contrary, are ready to waive all 
internal difterences, and unite actively, as against a common 
enemy, in opposing the Greek Church, and all denominations 
of Protestants. They are like a disciplined army under a single 
supreme leader ; in which, whatever jealousies and dissensions 
may exist among the individual oflicers and soldiers, every one 
is at his post whenever the trumpet gives the call to arms, and 
the whole act as one man against the hostile army. Pro- 
testants, on the contrary, labour under the disadvantages which 
are well known in military history, of an allied army — a host 
of confederates, — who are often found to forget .the common 
cause, and desert, or even ojDpose one another. 

Hence, it is continually urged against the Reformed Churches, 
'See what comes of allowing private judgment in religion. 
Protestants, who profess to sacrifice everything to truth, do not, 
after all, attain it, for if they did, they would all (as has been 
just observed) be agreed. The exercise of their private judg- 
ment does but expose them to the disadvantages of divisions, 
without, after all, securing to them an infallible certainty of 
attaining truth ; while those who submit to the decisions of one 
supreme central authority, have at least the advantage of being 
united against every common adversary.' 

And this advantage certainly does exist, and ought not to be 
denied, or kept out of sight. The principle is indeed sound, 
of making truth, as embraced on sincere conviction, the first 
vObject, and unity a secondary one ; and if Man were a less im- 
perfect Being than he is, all who adhered to that principle ■ 
would, as has been said, be agreed and united ; and truth and 
^rectitude would have their natural advantages over their oppo- 
sites. But as it is, what we generally find, is truth mixed with 
human error, and genuine religion tainted with an alloy of 
Jiuman weaknesses and prejudices. And this it is that gives 
a certain degree of advantage to any system — whether in itself 



Essay iii.] Annotations. ■ 85 

true or false — which makes union, and submission to a supreme 
authority on earth, the first point. ,^ 

If you exhort men to seek truth, and to embrace what, on 
deliberate examination, they are convinced is truth, they may 
follow this advice, and yet — considering what Man is — may be 
expected to arrive at diiferent conclusions. But if you exhort 
them to agree, and with that view, to make a compromise, — 
each consenting (like the Roman Triumvirs of old, who sacrificed 
to each other's enmity their respective friends) to proscribe some 
of their own convictions, — then, if they follow this advice, the 
end sought will be accomplished. 

But surely the advantages, great as they are, of union, are 
too dearly purchased at such a price ; since, besides the possi- 
bility that men may be united in what is erroneous and wrong 
in itself, there is this additional evil — and this should be re- 
membered above all, — tliat whatever absolute truth there may 
be in what is assented to on such a principle, it is not truth to 
those who assent to it not in conviction, but for union's sake. 
And what is in itself right to be done, is wrong to him who 
does it without the approbation of his own judgment, at the 
bidding of others, and with a view to their co-operation. On 
the other hand, the unity — whether among all Christians, or 
any portion of them — which is the result of their all holding 
the same truth, — this unity is not the less perfect from its being 
incidental, and not the primary object aimed at, and to which 
all else was to be sacrificed. But those who have only inci- 
dentally adhered to what is in itself perfectly right, may be 
themselves wrong; even to a greater degree than those who 
may have fallen into error on some points, but who are on the 
whole sincere votaries of truth. 

Another disadvantage that is to be weighed against the ad- 
vantages of an unity based on implicit submission to a certain 
supreme authority, is that the adlierents of such a system are 
deprived of the character of witnesses. 

When a man professes, and we are unable to disprove the 
sincerity of the profession, that he has been, on examination, 
convinced of the truth of a certain doctrine, he is a ivitness to 
the force of the reasons which have convinced him. But those 
who take the contrary course give, in reality, no testimony at 
all, except to the fact that they have received so and so from 



36 Of Unity in Meligion. [Essay iii. 

tlieir guide. They are Eke copies of some printed docTiment 
(whether many or few, makes no difference), struck off from the 
same types, and which consequently can have no more weight 
as evidence, than one. So also, the shops s.upply us with abund- 
ance of busts and prints of some eminent man, ' all striking 
likenesses of each other.' 

If there were but a hundred persons in all the world who 
professed to have fully convinced themselves, independently of 
each other's authority, of the truth of a certain conclusion, and 
these were men of no more than ordinary ability, their declara- 
tion would have incalculably more weight than that of a hun- 
dred millions, even though they were the most sagacious and 
learned men that ever existed, maintaining the opposite con- 
clusion, but having previously resolved to forego all exercise of 
their own judgment, and to receive implicitly what is dictated 
to them. For, the testimony (to use a simple and obvious 
illustration) of even a small number of eye-witnesses of any 
transaction, even though possessing no extraordinary powers of 
vision, would outweigh that of countless millions who should 
have resolved to close their eyes, and to receive and retail the 
report they heard from a single individual. 

So important in giving weight to testimony, is the absence of 
all concert, or suspicion of concert, that probably one of the 
causes which induced the Apostles, under the guidance of the 
Holy Spirit, to found several distinct and independent Churches, 
instead of a single community under one government on earth, 
was, the increased assurance thus afforded of the doctrines and 
of the Canon of Scripture received by all. For, it was not — as 
some have imagined — any General Council or Synod of the 
Universal Church, that determined what books and what doc- 
trines should be received. No one of the early Ceneral Coun- 
cils did more than declare what had been already received by 
the spontaneous decision of each of many distinct Churches, — 
which had thus borne, long before, their independent testimony 
to the books and the doctrines of Christ's inspired servants. 

So well is all this understood by crafty controversiahsts, 
that they usually endeavour to represent all who chance to 
agree in maintaining what they would oppose, as belonging to 
some School, Party, or Association of some kind, and in some 
way comhined, and acting in concert ; and this when there is no 
Droof, or shadow of proof, of any such combination, except co- 



Essay iii.] Annotations. 3.7 

incidence of opinion, Tliej are represented (to serre a purpose) 
as ducijples of such and such a leader. But ' there are three 
senses in which men are sometimes called ' disciples' of anj 
other person: (1.) bicorrectly^ from their simply maintaining 
something that he maintains, without any profession or proof 
of its being derliied from him. Thus, Augustine was a predesti- 
iiarian, and so was Mahomet; yet no one supposes that the one 
derived his belief from the other. It is very common, however, 
to say of another, that he is an Arian, Athanasian, Socinian, &c., 
which tends to mislead, unless it is admitted, or can be proved, 
that he learnt his opinions from this or that master. (2.) When 
certain persons avow that they have adopted the views of 
another, not however on his authority, but from holding them 
to be agreeable to reason or to Scripture ; as the Platonic, and 
most other philosopliical sects ; the Lutherans, Zuinglians, &c 
(3.) When, like the disciples of Jesus, and, as it is said, of the 
Pythagoreans, and the adlierents of certain Churehes, they profess 
to receive their system, mi the authority of their master or 
Church; to acquiesce in an 'ipse-dixit;' or, to receive all that 
the Church receives- These three senses should be carefully 
kept distinct'^ 

One of the earliest of the assailants of Bishop Hampden's 
Bampton Lectures (a writer who afterwards seceded openly to 
Eome) distinctly asserted that Dr. H., Dr. Arnold, Dr. Hinds, 
Mr. Blanco White, and Arclibkhop Whately were ' united in the 
closest bonds of private friendship, as well as of agreement in doc- 
trine.' Whether this wjis ^hwwn falsehood, or a mere random as- 
sertion, thrown out without any knowledge at all about the matter, 
one cannot decide. But {h^faet is, that Dr. Arnold never liad any 
close intimacy with Dr. Hampden; and with Dr. Hinds, and Mr, 
B. White, — he had not so much as a visiting acquaintance ! 

ISTow though the alleged 'private friendship' — had it existed 
— would have been nothing in itself blameable, one may easily 
see the purpose of the fabrication. That purpose evidently was, 
to impair in some degree the independent testimony of the 
persons mentioned, as to the points wherein they coincided, by 
insinuating that they had conspired together to found some 
kind of school or party ; and that, in furtherance of such a 



• Eden's Theol. Diet, Art. ' Disciples,' 



38 Of Unity in Religion. [Essay iii. 

plan, they might possibly have been biassed in their several 
judgments, or have made something of a compromise. 

How very probable such a re&nlt is, was s-trikingly shown, 
shortly after, by the formation of the 'Tract-party.' Of the 
persons who (deliberately and avowedly) combined for the pur- 
pose of advocating certain principles, some — as they themselves 
subsequently declared — disapproved of much that was put forth 
in several of the Tracts for the Time&, yet thought it best 
to suppress their disapprobation, and to continue to favom- the 
publication, till the advocacy of unsound views had reached an 
alarming height. 

The ingenuity displayed in many of those Tracts has givea 
currency to doctrines in themselves open to easy refutation; 
and the liigh character for learning of some of the writers, 
doubtless contributed to their succes*i ; but their being known t<t> 
have combined together (' conspired,^ is tlie term used by one 
of themselves) for the propagation of certain doctrines agreed 
upon, took ofl' ju&t so much of the weight of their authority. 

And when ministers of the Church of England, and Mora- 
vians, and Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methochsts, and Con- 
gregationalists, &c., are, all and each, without any concert, teach- 
ing to their respective congregatiwis certain fundamental Chris- 
tian doctrines, this their concurrence fm-nishes a strong 
presumption in favom* of those doctrines. Of these religious 
communities, some coincide on all fundamental points, while 
others, unhappily, ai-e, on many important points, opposed to 
each other i but as long as they are independent of each other, 
their spontaneous coincidence, where they do co'incide, gives 
great weight to their testimony. But if they formally combine 
together (in an Association, Alliance, Party, or whatever else ifc 
may be called), and pledge themselves to each other to pro 
pagate these doctrines, the presumption is proportionably 
weakened. 

It is veiy strange, that some persons not deficient, generally, 
in good sense, should fail to perceive the consequences of thus 
setting up what is in reality, though not in name, a new Ghxtrch. 
Besides that, under a specious appearance of promoting union 
among Christians, it tends to foster c?iVunion and dissension ia 
each Church, between those who do, and who do not, enrol 
themselves as members — ^besides this, the force of the spon- 
taneous and independent testimony of members of distinct 



Essay iii.] Annotations. 29 

Chiirclies, is, in great measure, destroyed, by the unwise means 
used for strengthening it. 

It is important that we should be fully aware, not only of 
the advantages which undoubtedly are obtained by this kind of 
union, but also of it^ disadvantages ; for neither belong exclu- 
sively to any particular Church, or other community, but to 
every kind of party, association, alliance, or by whatever other 
name it may be called, in which there is an express or under- 
stood obligation on the members to give up, or to suppress, 
their own convictions, and submit to the decisions of the leader 
or leaders under whom they are to act. 

This principle of sacrificing truth to unity,' creeps in gradually. 
The sacrifice Jlrst demanded, in such cases, is, in general^ not a 
great one. Men are led on, step by step, from silence as to 
some mistake, to connivance at fallacies, and thence to suppres- 
sion, and then to misrepresentation, of truth ; and ultimately 
to the support of known falsehood. 

It is scarcely necessary to say that I do not advocate the 
opposite extreme, — the too common practice of exaggerating 
differences, or setting down all who do not completely concur 
in all our views as ' infidels,' as ' altogether heterodox,' &c. The 
right maxim is one that we may borrow from Shakespere : 
' Nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in malice.' But it 
is worth remarking, that what may be called the two opposite 
extremes, in this matter, are generally found together. For it is 
the tendency of party-spirit to pardon anything in those who 
heartily support the party, and nothing in those who do not. 

* Men ought to take heed of rending God'S Church Jjy two kinds 
of controversies^ 

Controversy, though always an evil in itself, is sometimes a ne- 
cessary evil. To give up everything worth contending about, in ", 
order to prevent hurtful contentions, is, for the sake of extirpating/ 
noxious weeds, to condemn the field to perpetual sterility. 
Yet, if the principle that it is an evil only to be incurred when 
necessary for the sake of some important good, were acted 
upon, the two classes of controversies mentioned by Bacon 
would certainly be excluded. The first, controversy on subjects 
too deep and mysterious, is indeed calculated to gender strife. 
For, in a case where correct knowledge is impossible to any 



40 Of Unity in Religion, [Essay iii. 

and where all are, in fact, in the wrong, there is but little 
likelihood of agreement ; like men who should rasldy venture 
to explore a strange land in utter darkness, they will he 
scattered into a thousand des'ious paths. The second class of 
subjects that would be excluded by this principle, are those 
which relate to matters too minute and trifling. For it should 
be remembered that not only does every question that can be 
raised lead to differences of opinion, disputes, and parties, but 
also that the violence of the dispute, and the zeal and bigoted 
spirit of the party, ai'e not at all proportioned to tne im- 
portance of the matter at issue. The smallest spark, if thrown 
among very combustible substances, may raise a formidable 
conflagration. Witness the long and acrimonious disputes 
which distracted the Church concerning the proper time for the 
observance of Easter, and concerning the use of leavened or 
unleavened bread at the Lord's Supper. AVe of the prese^^ 
day, viewing these controversies from a distance, with the t^ 
of sober reason, and perceiving of how little consequence the 
points of dispute ai'e in themselves, provided they be so fixed as 
to produce a decent uniformity, at least among the members of 
each Church, can hardly bring ourselves to believe that the 
most important doctrines of the Gospel were never made the 
subject of more eager contentions than such trifles as these : 
and that for these the peace and unity of the Church were 
violated, and Christian charity too often utterly destroyed. 
But we should not forget that human nature is still the same as 
it ever was ; and that though the controversies of one age may 
often appear ridiculous in another, the disposition to contend 
about trifles may remain unchanged. 

Not only, however, should we avoid* the risk of causing 
needless strife by the discussion of such questions as are in 
themselves trifling, but those also are to be regarded as to us 
• insignificant, which, however curious, sublime, and interesting, 
can lead to no practical result, and have no tendency to make 
us better Christians, but are merely matters . of speculative 
curiosity. Paul is frequent and earnest in his exhortations to 
his converts to confine themselves to such studies as tend to 
the edification of the Church, — the increase of the fruits of the 
Spirit, — the conversion of infidels, — and the propagation of the 
essential doctrines of the Gospel. And these doctrines are all 
of a practical tendency. "While all the systems framed by 



iii.] Annotations. 41 

human superstition, enthusiasm, and imposture, whether Pagan, 
Romish, or Mahometan, abound, as might he expected, in mytho- 
logical tables and marvellous legends, it is one of the most 
remarkable characteristics of the true religion, that it reveals 
nothing that is not practically important for us to know with a 
view to our salvation. Our religion, as might no less be 
expected of one which comes not from Man, but from God, 
reveals to us, not the philosophy of the human mind in itself, 
nor yet the philosophy of the divine Nature in itself, but (that 
which is properly religion) the relation and connection of the 
two Beings ; — what God is to iis, — what He has done, and will 
do for us, — and what we are to be and to do, in regard to Him. 
Bacon, doubtless, does not mean to preclude all thought or 
mention of any subject connected with religion, whose practical 
utility we are miable to point out. On the contrary, he else- 
w)^ -re urges us to pursue truth, without always requiring to 
p&.oeive its practical application. But all cmitroversy, and 
everything that is likely, under existing circumstances, to lead 
to controversy, on such points, must be carefully avoided. 
When once a flame is kindled, we cannot tell how far it may 
extend. And since, though we may be allowed, we cannot be 
hound in duty to discuss speculative points of theology, the 
blame of occasioning needless dissension must lie with those 
who so discuss them as to incur a risk that hostile parties may 
arise out of their speculations. 

* Men create oiiposit'ions which are not, and put them into neio 
terms so fixed, as whereas the meaning ought to govern the 
term, the term in effect governeth the meaning.'' 

So important are words in influencing our thoughts, and so 
common is the error of overlooking their importance, that we 
cannot give too much heed to this caution of Bacon as to our 
use of language in religious discussion. The rules most im- 
portant to be observed are, first, to be aware of the amhiguity 
of words, and watchful against being misled by it ; since the 
same word not only may, but often must, be used to express 
different meanings ; and so common a source of dissension is 
the mistake hence arising of the meaning of others, that the 
word misunderstanding is applied to disagreements in general : 
secondly (since, on the other hand, the same meaning may be 
4* 



42 Of Unity in Religion. [Essay iii. 

expressed by different words), to guard against attaching too 
great importance to the use of any particular term : and lastly, 
to avoid, as much as possible, introducing or keeping up the use ' 
of any peculiar set of words and phrases, any * fixed terms,' as 
Bacon calls them, as the badge of a party. 

A neglect of this last rule, it is obvious, must greatly pro- 
mote causeless divisions and all the evils of party-spirit. Any 
system appears the more distinct from all others, when provided 
with a distinct, regular, technical phraseology, like a corporate 
body, with its coat of arms and motto. By this means, over 
and above all the real differences of opinion which exist, a fresh 
cause of opposition and separation is introduced among those 
who would perhaps be found, if their respective statements were 
candidly explained, to have in their tenets no real ground of 
disunion. Nor will the consequences of such divisions be as 
tritling as their causes ; for when parties are once firmly estab- 
lished and arrayed against each other, their opposition will 
,usually increase ; and the differences between them, which were 
originally little more than imaginary, may in time become 
serious and important. Experience would seem to teach us 
that the technical terms which were introduced professedly for 
the purpose of putting down heresies as they arose, did but 
serve rather to multiply heresies. Tliis, at least, is certain, 
tliat as scientific theories and technical phraseology gained 
currency, party animosity raged the more violently. Thos^ 
wdio, having magnified into serious evils by injudicious opposi- 
tion, heresies in themselves insignificant, appealed to the mag- 
nitude of those evils to prove that their opposition was called 
for : like unskilful physicians, who, when by violent remedies 
they have aggravated a trifling disease into a dangerous one, 
urge the violence of the symptoms which they themselves have 
produced, in justification of their practice. They employed that 
violence in the cause of what they helieved to be divine truth, 
which Jesus Himself and his Apostles expressly forbade in the 
cause of what they Tcnew to be divine truth. ' The servant of 
the Lord,' says Paul, ' must not strive, but be gentle unto all 
men, in meekness instructing them that oppose themselves, if 
God, peradventure, will give them repentance to the acknowl- 
edging of the truth." 



' 2 Tim. -xi. 25. 



Essay iii.] Annotations. 43 

On the whole, there is nothing that more tends to deprave 
the moral sense than Party, because it supplies that sympathy 
for which Man has a natural craving. To any one unconnected 
with Party, the temptations of personal interest or gratification 
are in some degree checked by the disapprobation of those 
around him. But a partizan finds himself surrounded by 
persons most of whom, though perhaps not unscrupulous in 
their private capacity, are prepared to keep him in countenance 
in much that is unjustifiable, — to overlook or excuse almost 
anything in a zealous and efiicient partizan, — and even to ap- 
plaud what in anotlier they would condemn, so it does but pro- 
mote some party-object. For, Party corrupts the conscience, by 
making almost all virtues flow, as it were, in its own channel. 
Zeal for truth becomes, gradually, zeal for the watchword — the 
shibboleth — of the party ; justice, mercy, benevolence, are all 
limited to the members of that party, and are censured if ex- 
tended to those of the opposite party, or (which is usually even 
more detested) those of no party. Candour is made to consist 
in putting the best construction on all that comes from one 
side, and the worst on all that does not. Whatever is wrong, 
in any member of the party, is either boldly denied, in the face 
of all evidence, or vindicated, or passed over in silence ; and 
whatever is, or can be brought to appear, wrong on the opposite 
side, is readily credited, and brought forward, and exaggerated. 
The principles of conduct originally the noblest, disinterested 
self-devotion, courage, and active zeal, Party perverts to its own 
purposes ; veracity, submissive humility, charity — in short, 
every christian virtue, — it enlists in its cause, and confines 
within its own limits ; and the conscience becomes gradually so 
corrupted that it becomes a guide to evil instead of good. The 
' light that is in us becomes darkness.'* 

' We may not take up Mahomet'' s sword^ or like unto it / that is, 
to propagate religion hy wars, or hy sanguinary persecutions 
to force consciences.^ 

Although Bacon thus protests against the ' forcing of men's . 
consciences,' yet I am not quite sure, whether he fully embraced 
the principle that all secular coercion, small or great, in what 



See 'Annotations' on Essay xxxix. 



44 Of Unity in Religion. [Essay iii. 

regards religious faith, is contrary to the spirit of Christianity ; 
and that a man's religion, as long as he conducts himself as a 
peaceable and good citizen, does not fall witMn the province of 
the civil magistrate. Bacon speaks with just horror of '■san- 
guinary persecutions.' Now, any laws that can be properly 
called ' sanguinary ' — any undue severity — should be deprecated 
in all matters whatever ; as if, for example, the penalty of death 
should be denounced for stealing a pin. But if religious truth 
does properly fall within the province of the civil magistrate, — 
if it be the office of government to provide for the good of the 
subjects, universally, including that of their souls, the rulers 
can have no more right to tolerate heresy, than theft or murder. 
They may plead that the propagation of false doctrine — that is, 
what is contrary to what they hold to be true, — is the worst 
kind of robbery, and is a murder of the soul. On that supposi- 
tion, therefore, the degree of severity of the penalty denounced 
against religious oifences, whether it shall be death, or exile, or 
line, or imprisonment, or any other, becomes a mere political 
question, just as in the case of the penalties for other crimes.' 

But if, on the conti*ary, we are to understand and comply 
with, in the simple and obvious sense, our Lord's injunction to 
' render to Caesar the tilings that are Caesar's, and to God the 
things that are God's ; ' and his declaration that his ' kingdom 
is not of this world ; ' and if we are to believe his Apostles 
sincere in renouncing, on behalf of themselves and their fol- 
lowere, all design of propagating their faith by secular force, or 
of monopolizing for Christians as such, or for any particular 
denomination of Christians, secular power and political rights, 
then, all penalties and privations, great or small, inflicted on 
purely religious grounds, must be equally of the character of 
persecution (though all are not equally severe persecution), and 
all alike unchristian. Persecution, in short, is not wrong because 
it is cruel, but it is cruel because it is wrong. 



' Tlie followinir is nn extract from a Protestant book, published a few years 
ago : — ' The magistrate who restrains, coerces, or punishes one who is propagating 
a true religion, opposes himself to God, and is a persecutor ; but the magistrate 
who restrains, coerces, or punishes one who is propagating a false religion, obeys 
the command of God, and is 7iot a persecictor.' 

This is a doctrine which every persecutor in the world would fully admit. 



ESSAY IV. OF REVENGE. 

REVEXGE is a kind of wild justice wliicli tlie more Man's 
nature runs to, tlie more ought law to weed it out ; for as 
for the first wrong, it does but oli'end the law ; but the revenge 
of that wrong putteth the law out of office. Certainly, in taking 
revenge a man is but even with his enemy, but in passing it 
over he is superior ; for it is a prince's part to pardon : and 
Solomon, I am sure, saith, ' It is the gloiy of a man to pass by 
an offence." That which is past is gone and irrecoverable, and 
wise men have enough to do with things present and to come ; 
therefore they do but trifle with themselves, that labour in past 
matters. There is no man doth a wrong for the wrong's sake, 
but thereby to purchase himself profit, or pleasure, or honour, 
or the like ; therefore why should I be angry with a man for 
loving himself better than me ? And if any man should do 
wrong, merely out of ill-nature, why, yet it is but like the thorn 
or brier, which prick and scratch, because they can do no other. 
The most tolerable sort of revenge is for those w^'ongs which 
there is no law to remedy : but then, let a man take heed the 
revenge be such as there is no law to punish ; else a man's 
enemy is still beforehand, and it is two for one. 

Some, when they take revenge, are desirous the party should 
know whence it cometh : this is the more generous ; for the 
delight seemeth to be not so much in doing the hurt, as in 
making the party repent : but base and crafty cowards are like 
the arrow that flieth in the dark. 

Cosmus, Duke of Florence, had a desperate saying against 
perfidious or neglecting^ friends, as if those wrongs were un- 
pardonable. 'You shall read,' saith he, 'that we are com- 
manded to forgive our enemies, but you never read that we 
are commanded to forgive our friends.'' But yet the spirit of 
Job^ was in a better tune : ' Shall we,' saith he, ' take good at 
God's hands, and not be content to take evil also?' and so of 
friends in a proportion. Tliis is certain, that a man that studieth 
revenge keeps his own wounds gi*een, which otherwise would 



' jPr(we»'6s xix. 11. * Neglecting. Neglectful ; negligent. ' /o6 ii. 10. 



46 Of Eevenge. [Essay iv. 

• 
heal and do ■well. Public revenges are for the most part fortu- 
nate ; as that for the death of Ciesar; for the death of Fertinax; 
for the death of Henry III. of France ; and many more. But 
in private revenges it is not so ; nay, rather vindictive persons 
live the life of witches, who, as they are mischievous, so end 
they unfortunate. 

ANTITIIETA OX REVENGE. 
Pro. Contra. 

' Vindicta privata, justitia agrestis. ' Qui injuriam fecit, prineipium malo 

' Private revenge is wild justice.' dedit: qui reddidit, inodum abstulit. 

' He u'ho has committed an injury has 

'Qui vim rependit, legem tantum made a beginning of evil; he who re- 

violat, lion liominera. turns it, has taken away all limit from 

' He who returns violence for violence, it.' 
qfends against the law only not 

against the individual.' ' Vindicta, quo magis naturalis, eo 

magis coercenda. 
'Utilis metus ultionis privata; nam ' The more natural revenge is toman, 

leges nimium siepe dormiunt. the more it should be repressed.' 

' Private vengeance inspires a salu- 
tary fear, as the laws too often slum- ' Qui facile injuriam reddit, is fortasse 
i^;-.'' tempore, non voluntate posterior erat. 

' He U'ho is ready in returning an in^ 
jury, has, perhaps, been anticipated by 
his enemy only in time. 



ANNOTATIONS. 

^ Some., when they take revenge., are desirous the party should 
know whence it cometh. 

It is certainly, as Bacon remarks, ' more generous' — or less 
'w?igenerous — to desire that the party receiving the punishment 
should ' know whence it cometh.' Aristotle distinguishes opyi] 
— (' Kesentment ' or ' Anger ') from Mino^ — ' Hatred,' (and 
when active, ' Malice') — by this. The one who hates, lie says, 
wishes the object of his hatred to suffer, or to be destroyed, no 
matter by whom ; while resentment craves that he should know 
from whom, and/or what, he suffers. And he instances Ulysses 
in the Odyssey, who w^as not satisiied with the vengeance he had 



' See, in Guy Majinering, Pleydell's remark, that if j'ou have not a regular 
chimney for the smoke, it will find its vay through the whole house. 



Essay iv.] Annotations. 47 

taken, under a feigned name, on the Cyclops, till lie had told 
him who he really was. 

So Shakespere makes Macduff, in his eager desire of ven- 
geance on Macbeth, say, 

' If thou be slain, and with no sword of mine, 
My wife's and children's ghosts will haunt me still.' 

^ In tciking revenge., a man is hut even with his enemy • hut in 
passing it over^ he is superior^ &g. 

Bacon, in speaking of the duty, and of the difficulty, of for- 
giving injuries, might have remarked that some of the things 
hardest to forgive are not what any one would consider injuries 
{i. ^., wrongs) at all. 

Many would reprobate the use, in such a case, of the word 
forgive. And the word ought not to be insisted on ; though 
that most intelligent woman. Miss Elizabeth Smith, says (in her 
commonplace-book, from which posthumous extracts were pub- 
lished) that ' a woman has need of extraordinary gentleness and 
modesty to he forgiven for possessing superior ability and learn- 
ing.' She would probably have found this true even now, to a 
certain degree ; though less than in her time. 

But not to insist on a word, say, instead of ' forgive,' that it 
is hard to 'judge fairly of and to 'feel kindly towards.' 

(1.) One who adheres to the views which were yours, and 
which you have changed. This was, doubtless, one of the 
Apostle Paul's trials. But in his case, the miracle he had ex- 
perienced, and the powers conferred on himself, could leave no 
dotiht on his mind. But the trial is much harder when you 
hear arguments used against you w^hich you had yourself for- 
merly employed, and which you cannot now refute ; and when 
you rest on reasons which you had formerly shown to be futile, 
and which do not quite satisfy you now ; and when you know 
that you are suspected, and half-suspect yourself, of being in 
some way biassed. Then it is that you especially need some one 
to keep you in countenance ; and are tempted to be angry with 
those who will not, however they may abstain from reproaching 
you with apostasy. 

Of course there is a trial on the opposite side also ; but it is 
far less severe. For, a change implies error., first or last ; and 
this is galling to one's self-esteem. The one who had adhered 



48 Of Revenge. [Essay iv. 

to Ms system, sect, or opinion, may hug himself on his (so-called) 
' consistency ;' and may congratulate himself — inwardly, if not 
openly, — on the thought that at least he may be quite right all 
through ; whereas the other must have been wrong somewhere. 
' I stand,' he may say to himself, ' where he was / I think as 
he thought, and do what he did ; he cannot at any rate tax me 
with fickleness ; nor can he blame anything in me which he 
was not himself guilty of.' All this is as soothing to the one 
party, as the thought of it is irritating to the other. 

(2.) One who has proved right in the advice and warning he 
gave you, and which you rejected. 

'I bear you no ill will, Lizzy' (says Mr. Bennet, in Miss 
Austen's Pride and PrejiodiGe\ ' for being justified in the warn- 
ing you gave me. Considering how things have turned out, I 
think this shows some magnanimity.' 

(3.) One who has carried off some prize from you ; whether 
the woman you were in love with, or some honour, or situation, 
• — especially if he has attained with little exertion what you had 
been striving hard for, without success. 

This is noticed by Aristotle {Rhetm'ic, Book ii.) as one great 
ground of envy (0i?ovof). 

(4.) One who has succeeded in some undertaking whose 
failure you had predicted : such as the railroad over Chat Moss, 
which most of the engineers pronounced impossible : or the 
Duke of Bridgewater's aqueduct, which was derided as a castle 
in the air. 

Again, with some minds of a baser nature, there is a diffi- 
culty, proverbially, in forgiving those whom one is conscious of 
having injured: and, again, those (especially if equals or infe- 
riors) who have done very great and important services, beyond 
what can ever receive an adequate return. Rochefoucault even 
says that ' to most men it is less dangerous to do hurt than to 
do them too much good.' But then it was his system to look 
on the dark side only of mankind. 

Tacitus also, who is not very unlike him in this respect, says 
that ' benefits are acceptable as far as it appears they may be 
repaid ; but that when they far exceed this, hatred takes the 
place of gratitude.' It is only, however, as has been said, the 
basest natures to whom any of these last-mentioned trials can 
occur, as trials. 



Essay iv,] Annotations. 49 

In all these and some other such cases, there is evidently no 
injury • and some will, as has been just said, protest against the 
use of the Avord 'forgive,' Avhen there is no vjwng to be forgiven. 

Then avoid the word, if you will ; only do not go on to ima- 
gine that you have no need to keep down, with a strong effort^ 
just the same kind of feelings that you would have had if there 
had been an injury. If you take for granted that no care is 
needed to repress such feelings, inasmuch as they would be so 
manifestly unreasonable, the probable result will be, that you 
wdll not rej^ress but indulge them. You will not, indeed, 
achiowUdge to yourself the real ground (as you do in the case 
of an actual injury) of your resentful feelings ; but you will 
deceive yourself by finding out some other ground, real or ima- 
ginary. ' It is not that the man adheres to his original views, 
but that he is an uncharitable bigot :' ' It is not that I grudge 
him his success, but that he is too much puffed up with it :' 
* It is not that I myself was seeking the situation, but that he is 
unfit for it ;' &c. 

He who cultivates, in the right way, the habit of forgiving 
injuries, will acquire it. But if you content yourself with this, 
and do not cultivate a habit of candour in such cases as those 
above alluded to, you will be deficient in that ; for it does not 
gi'ow wild in the soil of the human heart. And the unreasonable- 
ness and injustice of the feelings which will grow wild there, is 
a reason not why you should neglect to extirpate them, but why 
you should be the more asliamed of not doing so. 

It is worth mentioning, that your judgment of any one's 
character who has done anything wrong, ought to be exactly 
the same, whether the wrong was done to you or to any one 
else. A man who has cheated or slandered you is neither more 
nor less a cheat and a slanderer tban if it had been some other 
person, a stranger to you. This is evident ; yet there is great 
need to remind people of it ; for, as the very lowest minds of 
all regard with far the most disapprobation any wrong from 
which they themselves suffer, so, th'>so a few steps, and only a 
few, above them, in their dread of such manifest injustice, think 
they cannot bend the twig too far the contrary way, and are 
for regarding (in theory, at least, if not in practice) wrongs to 
oneself as no wrongs at all. Such a person will reckon it a 
point of heroic generosity to let loose on society a rogue who 
5 D 



50 Of Eemnge. [Essay iv. 

has clieatecl Jiim, and to leave imeensured and nnexposed a liar 
by whom he has been belied ; and the like in other cases. And 
if you refuse favour and countenance to those unworthy of it, 
whose misconduct has at all affected you., he will at once attri- 
bute this to personal vindictive feelings ; as if there could be 
no such thing as esteem and disesteem. One my even see 
tales, composed by persons not wanting in intelligence, and 
admired by many of what are called the educated classes, in 
which the virtue held up for admiration and imitation consists 
in selecting as a bosom friend, and a guide, and a model of 
excellence, one who had been guilty of manifest and gross 
injustice ; because the party had suffered personally from that 
injustice. 

It is thus that ' fools mistake reverse of wrong for right.' 
The charity of some persons consists in proceeding on the sup- 
position that to believe in the existence of an injury is to 
cherish implacable resentment ; and that it is impossible to 
forgive, except when there is nothing to be forgiven. It is 
obvious that these notions render nugatory the Gospel-precepts. 
Why should we be called upon to render good for evil, if we 
are bound always to explain away that evil, and call it good ? 
"Whe)-e there is manifestly just ground for complaint, we should 
accustom ourselves to say, ' That man owes me a hundred 
pence !' thus at once estimating the debt at its just amount, 
and recalling to our mind the parable of him who rigorously 
enforced his own chiims, when he had been forgiven ten thou- 
sand talents. 

There is a whole class of what may be called secondary vul- 
gar errors, — errors produced by a kind of re-action from those 
of people who are the very lowest of all, in point of intellect, or 
of moral sentiment, — errors which those fall into who are a few, 
;and but a very few, steps higher. 

Any one who ventures a remark on the above error, will be 
not unlikely to hear as a reply, ' Oh, but most men are far more 
disposed to judge too severely than too favourably of one who 
has injured themselves or their friends.' And this is true ; but 
it is nothing to the purpose, unless we lay down as a principle, 
that when one fault is more prevalent than another, the latter 
need not be shunned at all. ' Of two evils, chuse the less,' is 
•a just maxim, then, and then only, when there is no other alter- 



Essay iv.] Annotatio7is. 51 

native, — when we must take the one or the other : but it is mere 
folly to incur either, when it is in our power to avoid hath. 
Those who speak of 'a fault on the right side,' should be 
reminded that though a greater error is worse than a less, there 
is no right side in error. And in the present case, it is plain 
our aim should be to judge of each man's con^wd fairly and 
impartially, and on the same principles, whether we ourselves, 
or a stranger, be the party concerned. 

It may be added, that though the error of unduly glossing 
over misconduct when the injury has been done to oneself, is 
far less common than the opposite, among the mass of mankind, 
who have but little thought of justice and generosity, it is the 
error to which those are more liable who belong to a superior 
class, — those of a less coarse and vulgar mind ; and who, if they 
need admonition less, are more likely to profit by it, because 
they are striving to act on a right principle. 



ESSAY V. OF ADVERSITY. 

TT was a high speech of Seneca (after the manner of the 
-*- Stoics), that the 'good things which belong to prosperity 
are to be wished, but the good things that belong to adversity 
are to be admired' — 'Bona rernm secundarum optabilia, adver- 
sarum mirabilia'^ Certainly, if miracles be the command over 
nature, they appear most in adversity. It is yet a liigher 
speech of his than the other (mnch too high for a heathen), 
'It is true greatness to have in one the frailty of a man, and 
the security of a God' — 'Vere magnum habere fragilitatem 
hominis, securitatem Dei.'^ This would have done better in 
poesy,^ where transcendencies* are more allowed ; and the poets, 
indeed have been busy with it — for it is in effect the thing 
which is figured in that strange fiction of the ancient poets, 
which seemeth not to be without mystery;^ nay, and to have 
some approacli to the state of a Christian, 'that Hercules, when 
he went to unbind Prometheus (by whom human nature is re- 
presented), sailed the length of the great ocean in an earthen 
pot or pitcher, lively describing christian resolution, that saileth 
in the frail bark of the flesh through the waves of the world.^ 
But to speak in a mean,''^ the virtue of prosperity is temper- 
ance, the virtue of adversity is fortitude, which in morals is the 
more hei'oical virtue. Prosperity is the blessing of the Old 
Testament, adversity is the blessing of the New, which carrieth 
the greater benediction, and the clearer revelation of God's 



' Sen. Ad Lticil. 66. * Sen. Ad Lucil. 53. 

* Poesy. Poetry — 

' Musiet and Poesy 
To quicken you.' — Shakespere. 

* Transcendencies. Flights ; soarings. 

* Mystery. A sea-et meaning ; an emblem. 

' Important truths still let your fables hold, 

And moral mysteries -with art enfold. — Oranville. 

* Apollod. Dear. Orig. 11. 
'' Mean. Medium. 

'Temperance, with golden square. 
Betwixt them both can measure out a mean.' — Shakespere. 



Essaj v.] Annotations. 53 

favour. Yet even in tlie Old Testament, if you listen to 
David's harp, jou shall hear as many hearse-like airs a^ carols ; 
and the pencil of the Holy Ghost hath laboured more in de- 
scribing the afflictions of Job than the felicities^ of Solomon. 
Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes ; and adver- 
sity is not without comforts and hopes. We see in needleworks 
and embroideries, it is more pleasing to have a lively w^ork upon 
a sad^ and solemn o-round, than to have a dark and melancholy 
work upon a lightsome ground : judge, therefore, of the pleas- 
ure of the heart by the pleasure of the eye. Certainly virtue 
is like precious odours, most fragrant where they are incensed,^ 
or crushed ; for prosperity doth best discover vice, but adver- 
sity doth best discover vu-tue. 



ANNOTATIONS. 

Some kinds of adversity are chiefly of the character of tkials 
and others of discipline. But Bacon does not advert to this 
difference, nor say anything at all about the distinction between 
discipline and trial ; which are quite different in themselves, but 
©ften confounded together. 

By ' discipline' is to be understood, anything — whether of 
the character of advei"sity or not — that has a direct tendency 
to produce impmmment, or to create some qualification that 
did not exist before ; and by ti-ial, anything that tends to ascer- 
tain what improvement has been made, or what qualities exist. 
Both effects may be produced at once ; but what we speak of 
is, the proper character of trial, as such, and of discii^line, as 
such, 

A college tutor, for instance, seeks to 7nake his pupils good 
scholar ; an examiner, to ascertain how far each candidate is 
such. It may so happen that the tutor may be enabled to 



' Felicities (rarely used in the plural). ' The felicities of her -wonderful reign.' 
— AUerbwry, 

* Sad. Dark-coloured. ' I met liira accidentally in London, in sacZ-coloured 
clothes, far from being costly.' — Walton's Lives. 

• Incensed. Set on fire ; burned, 

5* 



54: Of Adversity. [Essay v. 

form a judgment of the proficiency of the pupils ; and that a 
candidate may learn something from the examiner. But what 
is essential in each case, is incidental in the other. For no one 
would say that a course of lectures was a failure, if the pupils 
were well instructed, though the teacher might not have ascer- 
tained their proficiency; or that an examination had not an- 
swered its purpose, if the qualifications of the candidates were 
proved, though they miglit have learnt nothing from it. 

A coiTesponding distinction holds good in a great many other 
things : for instance, what is called ^proving a gun,' that is, 
loading it up to the muzzle and firing it — does not at all tend to 
increase its strength, but only proves that it is strong. Proper 
hammering and tempering of the metal, on the other hand, tends, 
to 'mahe it strong. 

Thc^e two things are, as has been just said, very likely to be 
confounded together : (1) because very often they are actually 
combined j as e. g., well-conducted exercise of the body, both 
displays, and promotes, strength and agility. Tlie same holds 
good in the case of music, and various other pm'suits, and in 
none more than in virtuous j)raetice. 

(2) Because from discipline and from trial, and anything 
analogous to these, we may often draw the same inference, 
though by diiferent reasonings : e. ^., if you know that a gun- 
barrel has gone through such and such processes, under a skil- 
ful metallurgist, you conclude d pi'i&ri that it will be a strong 
one; and again you draw the same inference from knowing that 
it has been '■proved.^ This latter is an argument from a sign, 
the other from cause to effect.' So also, if you know that 
a man has been under a good tutor, this enables you to form 
an a priori conjecture, that he is a scholar ; and by a different 
kind of argument, you infer the same from his having passed 
an examination. 

Great evils may arise from mistaking the one of these things 
for the other. For instance, children's lives have been sacrificed 
by the attempt to make them hardy by exposing them to cold, 
and wet, and hardship. Those that have been so exposed are (as 
many of them as survive) hardy ; because their having gone 
through \t proves that they mere of a strong constitution, though 



Mhet&rie, Part I. Chap. IL 



Essay v.] Annotations. 55 

it did not make tliem so. The ' proving' of a gun is the cause, 
not of its heing strong, but of our l&nowing it to be strong. 
And it is wonderful how prevalent in all subjects is the ten- 
dency to confound these two things together : e.g.^ Balak says to 
Balaam, ' I wot that he whom thou blessest is blessed, and he 
whom thou cursest is cursed,' And this must have been true, 
if Balaam was a true pro^^het ; but the mistake was, to suppose 
that his curse or blessing brought on these results, when, in 
tiruth, it brought only the knowledge of the divine designs and 
sentences. 

Different kinds of adversity (and also of prosperity, for both 
are equally trials., though it is only adversity that is usually 
called such) differ in this respect from each other, some being 
more of the character of discijiline, and others of trial. 

Generally speaking, a small degree of persecution and op- 
pression is more of a discipline for humanity than very great 
and long-continued. It is everywhere observed that a liberated 
slave is apt to make a merciless master, and that boys who 
have been cruelly fagged at scliool are cruel faggers. Sterne 
introduces a tender-hearted negro girl, of whom it is remarked 
that ' she had suffered oppression, and had learnt mercy,' as if 
this was a natural consequence. It would have been more 
true to have said, '-Although she had suffered much oppres- 
sion,' &c. 

Most of the early Reformers were intolerant. Most bitter 
was the persecution, in the Low Countries, of the Arminians by 
the Calvinists, who had very recently been delivered from perse- 
cution themselves,^ And a people who have been so long and 
so severely persecuted as the Vaudois, and yet retain, as they 
do, a mild and tolerant character, give strong evidence of the 
domination of a real christian principle. 

The celebrated ' Pilgrim Fathers,' who fled from the tyranny 
of Laud and his abettors, to America, and are described as 
having ' sought only freedom to worship God^ had no notion 
of allowing the same freedom to others, but enacted and 
enforced the most severe penalties against all who didered from 



' See, in Mr. Macaulay's Hktory, a case of most atrocious cruelty perpetrated 
by Presbyterians who had witnessed cruel persecution of themselves or their 
fathers. VoL iv. p. 781. 



56 Of AdversiUj. [Essay v. 

them, and compelled the ever-venerated Koger Williams, the 
great champion of toleration, to fly from them to Rhode Island, 
where he fonnded a colony on his own truly Christian system. 
One of the principal founders of the New England colony 
remonstrated with these persecutors, saying (in a letter given in 
a late number of the Edinburgh Reviewf ' Reverend and dear 
sirs, whom I unfeignedly love and respect, it doth not a little 
grieve my spirit to hear what sad things are reported daily of 
your tyranny and persecution in New England, as that you 
iine, whip, and imj^rison men for their consciences. E'irst, you 
compel such to come into your assemblies as you know will not 
join you in your worship ; and when they show their dislike 
thereof, or witness against it, then you stir up your magistrates 
to punish them, for such, as you conceive, their public aflronts. 
Truly, friends, this your practice of compelling any, in matters 
of worship, to do that whereof they are not fully persuaded, is 
to make them sin ; for so the Apostle {liomans xiv. 23) tells 
us ; and many are made hypocrites thereby, conforming in their 
outward acts for fear of punishment. We pray for you, and wish 
you prosperity every way ; hoping the Lord would have given 
you so much light and love there, that you might have been 
eyes to God's people here, and not to practise those courses in 
a wilderness which you went so t\ir to prevent.' They replied, 
' Better be hypocrites than profane persons. Hypocrites give 
God part of his due — ^the outward man ; but the profane person 
giveth God neither outward nor inward man. You know not 
if you think we came into this wilderness to practise those 
courses which we fled from in England. We believe there is 
a vast dilference between men's inventions and God's institu- 
tions : we fled from men's inventions, to which we else sliould 
have been compelled ; we compel none to men's inventions.' 

About the same time Williams sent a warm remonstrance to 
his old friend and governor, Endicott, against these violent 
proceedings. The Massachusetts theocracy could not complain 
that none showed them their error : they did not persevere in 
the system of persecution without having its wrongfulness 
fully pointed out. 

' Had Banyan,' says the Reviewer,'' ' opened his conventicle 



Oct. 1855, p. 564. » Page 510. 



Essay v.] Atinotations. 5,7 

in Boston, he would have been banished, if not whipped ; had. 
Lord Baltimore appeared there, he would have been liable to 
perpetual imprisonment. If Penn had escaped \vtth either of 
his ears, the more pertinacious Fox would, doubtless, have ended 
by mounting the gallows with Marmaduke Stephenson or 
William Leddra. Yet the authors of these extremities would 
have had no admissable pretext. They were not instigated by 
the dread of similar pereecution, or by the impulse to retaliate. 
There was no hierarchy to invite them to the plains of Ar- 
mageddon ; there was no Agag to hew in pieces, or kings and 
nobles to bind with links of iron. They persecuted sponta- 
neously, deliberately, and securely. Or rather, it might be 
said, they were cruel under difficulties. They trod the grapes 
of their wine-press in a city of refuge, and converted their 
Zoar into a house of Egyptian bondage ; and, in this respect, 
we conceive they are without a parallel in history.' 

On the other hand, a short or occasional oppression is a good 
discipline for teaching any one not very ill disposed to feel for 
others. 

Mr. Macaulay beautifully illustrates this from the tale of the 
Fisherman and the Genie, in the Ai'obian Niglds. ' The genie 
had at first vowed that he would confer wonderful gifts on 
any one who should release him from the casket in which he 
was imprisoned ; and during a second period he had vowed a 
still more splendid reward. But being still disappointed, he 
next vowed to grant no other favour to his liberator than to 
chuse what death he should sutler. Even thus, a people who 
have been enslaved and oppressed for some years are most 
grateful to their liberators ; but those wdio are set free after 
very long slavery are not unlikely to teai- their liberators to 
pieces.' 

Sickness is a kind of advei-sity which is both a trial and a 
discipline ; but much more of a discipline Avhen short, and of a 
trial when very long. The kindness of friends during sickness 
is calculated, when it is newly called forth, to touch the heart, 
and call forth gratitude ; but the confirmed invalid is in danger 
of becoming absorbed in self, and of taking all kinds of care 
and of sacrifice as a matter of course. 

Danger of death is another kind of adversity which has both 
characters ; but it is much more of a wholesome discipline 



58 Of Adversity. [Essay v. 

wlien the danger is from a storm, or from any other external 
cause than from sickness. The well-known proverb, ' The Devil 
was sick, &ft.,' shows how generally it has been observed that 
people, when they recover, forget the resolution formed during 
sickness. One reason of the difference^and perhaps the chief 
— is, that it is so much easier to recall exactly the sensations 
felt when in perfect health and yet in imminent danger, and to 
act over again, as it were, in imagination, the whole scene, than to 
recall fully, when in health, the state of mind during some sick- 
ness, which itself so much aifects the mind along with the body. 

But it is quite possible either to improve, or to fail to improve, 
either kind of affliction. 

And, universally, it is to be observed that, though in other 
matters there may be trials which are nothing hut trials, and 
have no tendency to improve the subject tried, but merely to 
test it (as in the case of the proving of a gun alluded to above), 
this can never be the case in what relates to moral conduct. 
Every kind of trial, if well endured, tends to fortify the good 
principle. There are, indeed, many things which are more 
likely to hurt than to improve the moral character ; and to such 
trials we should he unjustifiable in exjyosing ourselves or others 
unnecessarily. But these, if any one does go through them 
well, do not merely prove the moral principle to be good, but 
will have had the effect of still further fortifying it. 

And the converse, unhappily, holds good also. Every kind 
of improving process — religious study, good example, or what- 
ever else, — if it does not leave you the better, will leave you the 
worse. Let no one flatter himself that anything external will 
make him wise or virtuous, without his taking pains to learn 
wisdom or virtue from it. And if any one says of any afflic- 
tion, 'No doubt it is all sent for my good,' he should be 
reminded to ask himself whether he is seeking to get any good 
out of it. ' Sweet,' says the poet, ' are the uses of adversity ;' 
but this is for those only who take care to onake a good use 
of it. 

Most carefully should we avoid the error which some 
parents, not (otherwise) deficient in good sense, commit, of im- 
posing gratuitous restrictions and privations, and purposely 
inflicting needless disappointments, for the pur^DOse of inuring 



Essay v.] Annotations. 59 

children to the pains and troubles they \n\[ meet with in after- 
life. Yes, be assured they will meet with quite enough, in 
every portion of life, including childhood, without your strewing 
their path with thorns of your own providing. And often 
enough will you have to limit their amusements for the sake of 
needful study, to restrain their appetites for the sake of health, 
to chastise them for faults, and in various ways to inflict pain 
or privations for the sake of avoiding some greater evils. . Let 
this always be explained to them whenever it is possible to do 
so ; and endeavour in all cases to make them look on the parent 
as never the voluntary giver of anything but good. To any 
hardships wdiich they are convinced you inflict reluctantly, and 
to those which occur through the dispensations of the All- Wise, 
they will more easily be trained to submit with a good grace, 
than to any gratuitous sufferings devised for them by fallible 
men. To raise hopes on purpose to produce disappointment, to 
give provocation merely to exercise the- temper, and, in short, 
to inflict pain of any kind merely as a training for patience and 
fortitude — this is a kind of discipline which Man should not 
presume to attempt. If such trials prove a discipline not so 
much of cheerful fortitude as of resentful aversion and suspicious 
distrust of the parent as a capricious tyrant, you will have only 
yourself to thank for this result. 

' Since the end of suflfering, as a moral discipline,' says an 
excellent writer in the Edinhui'gh Review (January, 1847), on 
the Life of Pascal, 'is only to enable us at last to bear unclouded 
happiness, what guarantee can we now have of its beneficial 
effect on us, except by partial experiments of our capacity of 
recollecting and practising the lessons of adversity in intervals 
of prosperity? It is true that there is no more perilous ordeal 
through which Man can pass — no greater curse which can be 
imposed on him, as he is at present constituted — than that of 
being condemned to walk his lifelong in the sunlight of unshaded 
prosperity. His eyes ache with that too untempered brilliance 
— ^lie is apt to be smitten w^ith a moral coup de soleil. But it 
as little follows that no sunshine is good for us. He who made 
us, and who tutors us, alone knows what is the exact measure 
of light and shade, sun and cloud, storm and calm, frost and heat, 
which will best tend to mature those flowers which are the 



6P; Of Adversity. [Essay v. 

object of this celestial husbandly ; and which, when transplanted 
into the paradise of God, are to bloom there for ever in 
amaranthine loveliness. Nor can it be without presumption 
that we essay to interfere with these processes ; our highest 
wisdom is to fall in with them. And certain it is that every 
man will find by experience that he has enough to do to bear 
with patience and fortitude the real afflictions with which God 
may visit him, without venturing to fill up the intervals in 
which lie has left him ease, and even invites him to gladness, 
by a self-imposed and artificial sorrow. Nay, if his mind be 
well constituted, he will feel that the learning how to apply, in 
hours of happiness, the lessons which he has learned in the 
school of sorrow, is not one of the least difficult lessons which 
sorrow has to teach him ; not to mention that the grateful 
reception of God's gifts is as true a part of duty — and even a 
more neglected part of it — than a patient submission to his 
chastisements. 

' It is at our peril, then, that we seek to interfere with the 
discipline which is provided for us. He who acts as if God had 
mistaken tlie proportions in which prosperity and adversity should 
be alloted to us — and seeks by hair shirts, prolonged abstinence, 
and self-imposed penance, to render more perfect the discipline 
of suffering, — only enfeebles instead of invigorating his piety ; 
and resembles one of those hypochondriacal patients — the plague 
and torment of physicians — who having souglit advice, and 
being supposed to follow it, are found not only taking their 
physician's well-judged prescriptions, but secretly dosing them- 
selves in the intervals w^ith some quackish nostrum. Thus it 
was even with a Pascal — and we cannot see that the ex^^eriment 
was attended in his case with any better efiiects.' 

^ Prosperity is the hlessing of the Old Testament / Adversity is 
the Messing of the Neio^ 

The distinguishing characteristic of the Old Covenant, of the 
Mosaic Law, was that it was enforced by a system of temporal 
rewards and judgments, administered according to an extra- 
ordinary [miraculous] providence. The Israelites M^ere promised, 
as the reward of obedience, long life, and health, and plentiful 
harvests, and victory over their enemies. And the punishments 



Essay v.] Annotations. 61 

threatened for disobedience were pestilence, famine, defeat, and 
all kinds of temporal calamity. These were the rewards and 
punishments that formed the sanction of the Mosaic Law. But 
the I^ew Covenant, the Gospel, held out as its sanction rewards 
and punishments in the next world, and those only. The 
former kingdom of God was a kingdom of this world. The 
Lord Jesus, on the contrary, declared that the new kingdom of 
God, His kingdom, ' was not of this world.' And so far from 
23romising worldly prosperity to his followers as a reward of 
their obedience to Him, Lie prepared them for suifering and 
death in his cause, even such as he endured Himself; and pro- 
nounced them ' blessed when men should hate and persecute' 
them in his cause, saying, ' great is your reward in Heaven.' 
The disciples were indeed taught, and through them all 
Cliristians in every age are taught, that the painful trials sent 
to them were among the ' things that work together for good 
(that is, spiritual and eternal good) to them that love God ;' and 
that they ought not to think it ' strange concerning the fiery 
trial which was to try them, as though some strange thing 
happened unto them,' but to look to the example of the Lord 
Jesus, and 'rejoice in ILm always.' 

Under the Christian dispensation, therefore, chastisement is 
for a very diiferent purpose from retribution ; the allotment of 
good and evil, according to the character of each man (which is 
properly retribution), is reserved for the next world. The Apostle 
Paul points out as one of the charade ristics of the Gospel, that 
in it God has ' commanded all men everwhere to repent, inas- 
much as He has APPOINTED A DAY in which he will judge 
the world in righteousness.' 

Tlie novelty and peculiarity of this announcement consisted, 
not in declaring the Deity to be the judge of the world (for 
this the Jews knew, and most of the Pagans believed), but in 
declaring that He had appointed a day for that judgment, before 
Christ's tribunal in the neoet world. They were thenceforth to 
look for a retribution, not, as before with the Jews, regular, and 
with other nations occasionally, but prepared for all men ac- 
cording to the character of each ; not, as before, immediate in 
the present life, but in the life to come. 

It is true that some men, who are nearly strangers to such 
a habit, may be for a time more alarmed by the denunciation 
6 



62 Of Adversity. 

of immediate temporal judgments for their sins, tlian by any 
considerations relative to ' the things which are not seen and 
which are eternal.' But the effect thus produced is much less 
likely to be lasting, or while it lasts to be salutary, because 
temporal alarm does not tend to make men spiritually-minded, 
and any reformation of manners it may have produced, will 
not have been founded on Christian principles. A man is not 
more acceptable in the sight of God than before, though more 
likely to attain the temporal objects he aims at, if he is acting 
on no higher motive tlian the goods and evils of the present 
world can supply. ' Yerily I say unto you, they have their 
reward.' 

But to look for temporal retribution, is surely inconsistent 
with the profession of a religion whose Founder was persecuted 
and crucified, and whose first preachers were exposed to ' hunger, 
and thirst, and cold, and nakedness,' and every kind of hardship, 
and were ' made the offscouring of all things ;' so that they 
declared that ' if in this life only they had hope in Christ, they 
w^ere of all men most miserable.' We should consider, too, that 
those very sufferings were a stumblingblock to the unbelieving 
Jews ; not merely from their being unwilling to expose them- 
selves to the like, according to the forewarnings of Jesus, such 
as, ' In this world ye shall have tribulatioii ;' but still more from 
their regarding these sufferings as a mark of divine displeasure., 
and consequently a proof that Jesus could not have come from 
God. Because He was ' a man of sorrows and acquainted with 
grief,' they ' did esteem Him stricken, SMITTEIS' OF GOD, 
and afflicted,' and they ' hid their face from Him.' 

And it should be remembered, that the Jews., who had been 
brought up under a dispensation sanctioned by temj^oral rewards 
and punishments, were less inexcusable in this their error, than 
those Christians who presume to measure the divine favour and 
disfavour by temporal events. 



ESSAY VI. OF SIMULATION^ AND DIS- 
SIMULATION. 

DISSIMULATION is but a faint kind of policy, or wisdom 
— for it asketli a strong wit and a strong heart to know 
wlien to tell truth, and to do it — therefore it is the weaker sort 
of politicians that are the greatest dissemblers. 

Tacitus saith, ' Livia sorted^ well with the arts of her husband, 
and dissimulation of her son,'^ attributing arts of policy to 
Augustus, and dissimulation to Tiberius ; and again, when 
Mucianus encourageth Yespasian to take arms against Yitellius, 
he saith, ' We rise not against the piercing] udgment of Augustus 
nor the extreme caution or closeness of Tiberius.^^ These pro- 
perties of art, or policy, and dissimulation, and closeness, are 
indeed habits and faculties several,* and to be distinguished ; 
for if a man have that penetration of judgment as^ he can 
discern what things are to be laid open, and what to be secreted, 
and what to be showed at half-lights, and to whom and when 
(which indeed are arts of state, and arts of life, as Tacitus well 
calleth them), to him a habit of dissimulation is a hindrance and 
a poorness. But if a man cannot obtain to' that judgment, 
then it is left to him generally to be close, and a dissembler; 
for where a man cannot choose or vary in particulars, there it 
is good to take the safest and wariest way in general, like the 
going softly by one that cannot well see. Certainly the ablest 
men that ever were, have had all an openness and frankness of 
dealing, and a name of certainty and veracity ; but then they 
were like horses well managed, for they could tell passing well 
when to stop to turn, and at such times when they thought the 



^ Simulation. The pretending that to he which is not. ' The feigning to be 
■what one is not by gesture, action, or behaviour, is called simulation.' — South. 
"Sort. So jit; suit. 

' It .sorts -well with you fierceness.' — Shakespere. 
» Tacit. A7inal. v. 1. * Tacit. Hist. ii. 16. 

' Several. Different ; distinct. 

' Four several armies to the field are led, 
Which, high in equal hopes, four princes lead.' — Dryden. 
• As. That. See page 23. ' Obtain to. Attain to. 



64: Of simulation and Dissimulation. [Essay vi. 

case indeed required dissimulation, if then tliej used it, it came 
to pass that the former opinion, spread abroad, of their good 
faith and clearness of dealing, made them almost invisible. 

There be three degrees of this hiding and veiling of a man's 
self: the lirst, closeness, reservation, and secrecy, — when a man 
leaveth himself without observation, or without hold to be taken, 
what he is ; the second, dissimulation in the negative, — when a 
man lets fall signs and arguments that he is not that he is ; 
and the third, simulation in the aifirmative, — when a man indus- 
triously and expressly feigns and pretends to be that' he is not. 

For the first of these, secrecy, it is indeed the virtue of a 
confessor ; and assuredly the secret man heareth many con- 
fessions, for who will open himself to a blab or a babbler? 
But if a man be thought secret, it inviteth discovery, as the 
more close air sucketh in the more open; and as in confessing, 
the revealing is not for worldly use, but for the ease of a man's 
heart ; so secret men come to the knowledge of many things 
in that kind, while men rather discharge their minds than impart 
their minds. In few words, mysteries are due to secrecy. 
Besides (to say truth) nakedness is uncomely, as well in mind 
as in body ; and it addeth no small reverence to men's manners 
and actions, if they be not altogether open. As for talkers, 
and futile^ persons they are commonly vain and credulous 
withal ; for he that talketh wdiat he know^eth, will also talk 
what he knoweth not, therefore set it down, that a habit of 
secrecy is both politic and moral ; and in this part it is good 
that a man's face give his tongue leave to speak ; for the dis- 
covery of a man's self, by the tracts^ of his countenance, is a 
great weakness <and betraying, by how much it is many times 
more marked and believed than a man's words. 

For the second, which is dissimulation, it followetli many 
times upon secrecy, by a necessity ; so that he that will be 
secret, must be a dissembler in some degree, — for men are too 



'That. What; that which. 'To do always that is righteous in thy sight.' — 
English^ Liturgy. 

^ Futile. Talkative ; loquacious, ' Tlie parable (Prov. xxix. 2), it seems, 
especially corrects not the futility of vaine persons which easily utter as well what 
may be spoken as what should be secreted ; not garrulity whereby they fill others, 
even to a surfeit; but the government of speech.' — On Learning. By G. "Watts. 

^ Tracts. Traits {traicts) ; features. 



Essay vi.] Of Simulation and Dissimulation. 65 

cunning to suffer a man to keep an indifferent^ carriage between 
both, and to be secret, without swaying the balance on either 
side. They will so beset a man with questions, and draw him 
on, and pick it out of him, that, without an absurd silence, he 
must show an inclination one way ; or if he do not, they will 
gather as much by his silence as by his speech. As for equivo- 
cations, or oraculous^ speeches, they cannot hold out long ; so 
that no man can be secret, except he give himself a little scope 
of dissimulation, which is, as it were, but the skirts or train of 
secrecy. 

But for the third degree, which is simulation and false pro- 
fession, that I hold more culpable, and less politic, except it be 
in great and rare matters ; and, therefore, a general custom of 
simulation (which is this last degree) is a vice rising either of a 
natural falseness, or feaiiulness, or of a mind that hath some 
main faults, which, because a man must needs disguise, it 
maketh him practise simulation in other things, lest his hand 
should be out of use. 

The advantages of simulation and dissimulation are three — 
first, to lay asleep opposition, and to surprise; for where a 
man's intentions are published, it is an alarm to call up all that 
are against them ; the second is, to reserve to a man's self a 
fair retreat ; for if a man engage himself by a manifest declara- 
tion, he must go through, or take a fall : the third is, the better 
to discover the mind of another ; for to him that opens himself, 
men will hardly show themselves averse, but ^vill (fair^) let him 
go on, and turn their freedom of speech to freedom of thought ; 
and therefore it is a good shrewd proverb of the Spaniard, ' Tell 
a lie and find a troth,' as if there were no way of discovery but 
by simulation. There be also three disadvantages to set it even : 
the first, that simulation and dissimulation commonly carry 
with them a show of fearfulness, which, in any business, doth 
spoil the feathers of round* flying up to the mark ; the second, 



' Indifferent. Impartial. ' Tliat they may truly and indifferently minister 
justice.' — Prayer for the Church 3Elitant. 

* Oraculous. Oracular. 

' He spoke oraculous and sly ; 
He'd neither grant the question nor deny.' — King. 
' Fair (adverb). Complaisantly. 

' Thus fair they parted till the morrow's dawn.' — Bryden. 

* Round. Direct. ' Let her be round with him.' — Shakcspere. 

6* E 



66 Of Simulation mid Dimbrmlatlon. [Essay vi. 

that it 23iizzletli and perplexeth the conceifs' of many, that 
perhaps would otherwise co-operate with him, and makes a man 
walk almost alone to his own ends ; the third, and greatest, is, 
that it depriveth a man of one of the most principal instruments 
for action, which is trust and belief. The best composition 
and temperature'' is, to have openness in fame and opinion ; 
secrecy in habit ; dissimulation in seasonable use ; and a power 
to feign, if there be no remedy. 

ANTITHETA ON SIMULATION AND DISSIMULATION. 
Pro. Contra. 

' Dissimulatio, compendiaria sapien- ' Qiiibus artes civiles supra captum 

tia. ingenii sunt, iis dissimulatio pro pru- 

' Tlie art of concealing is a short cut dentia erit. 
to the most important part of practical 'Those whose minds cannot grasp 

wisdom.' political sagacity, substitute dissimula- 

tion for prudence.' 
' Sepes consiliorum dissimulatio. 

' Concealment is the hedge of our ' Qui dissimulat, prsecipuo ad agen- 

designs.' dum instrumento se privat — i. e., fide. 

'He who practises concealment de- 

' Qui indissimulanter omnia agit, asqne ^^-^^^ j^-^^^^y. ^y ^ ,„^,^ important in- 

decipit ; nam plurimi, aut non capiunt, .trmnent of actio7i-namely, confidence' 
aut non credunt. 

'He who acts in all tilings openly ' Dissimulatio dissimulationem invitat. 

does not deceive the less ; for most ' Dlssimidation invites disshmdation.' 
persons either do not understand, or do 
not believe him.' 



ANNOTATIONS. 

' Of Simulation.'' , 

It is a pity that our language has lost the word ' simulation ;' 
so that we are forced to make ' dissimulation' serve for both 
senses. 

' Id quod abest, simulat, dissimulat quod adcst.'^ 

' The ablest men have all had an openness and frankness ^^ &c. 

There is much truth in Bacon's remark in the Antitheta, 

■that those whose whole conduct is open and undisguised deceive 

^ Conceits. Conceptions — as: 

' You have a noble and a true conceit 
Of godlike amity.' — Shakespere. 
' Temperature. Constitution. 'Memory depends upon the temperature of the 
ibrain.' — Watts. 

' Simulates that which is not; dissimulates that -which is. 



vi.] Annotations. 67 

people not tlie less, because the generality either do not nnder- 
stand them, or do not believe them. And this is practically 
the case when those you have to deal with are of a crafty cha- 
racter. They expend great ingenuity in guessing what it is you 
mean, or what you design to do, and the only thing that never 
occurs to them is just what you have said. 

It is to be observed, however, that some persons, who are not 
really frank and open characters, appear such from their want 
of delicacy and of reiined moral taste. They speak openly of 
things pertaining to themselves (such as most people would 
suppress), not from incapacity for disguise, or from meaning to 
make a confidant of* you, but from absence of shame. And 
such a person may be capable of much artifice when it suits his 
purpose. It is well, therefore, that the inexperienced should 
be warned against mistaking shamelessness for sincerity of 
character. 

Those who are habitually very reserved, and (as Miss Edge- 
worth expresses it in one of her tales), ' think that in general it 
is best not to mention things,' will usually meet with fewer 
tangible failures than the more communicative, unless these lat-' 
ter possess an unusual share of sagacity ; but the latter will 
(unless excessively imprudent) have a greater amount of success, 
on the whole, by gaining many advantages which the others 
will have missed. 

' They will so Tjeset a man with questions.^ 

Tliere is, as Bacon observes, a great difficulty in dealing with 
such persons ; for a true answer to their impertinent questions 
might do great mischief; and to refuse an answer would be 
undei'stood as the same thing. ' Pray, do you know the author 
of that article ! Is it your friend Mr. So-and-so ?' or, ' Is it 
true that your friend Such-a-one has had heavy losses, and is 
likely to become insolvent V or, ' Is he concealed in such-and- 
such a place V &c. If you reply, ' I do not chuse to answer,' 
this Avill be considered as equivalent to an answer in the affir- 
mative. 

It is told of Dean Swift, that when some one he had lampooned 
came and asked him whether he was the writer of those verses, 
he replied, that long ago he had consulted an experienced 



68 Of Simulation and Dissimulation. [Essay vi. 

lawyer what was best to "be done when some scoundrel who had 
been shown up in a satire asked him whether he were the au- 
thor ; and that the lawyer advised him always, whether he had 
written it or not, to deny the authorship, — and, accordingly/ 
said he, ' I now tell you that I am not the author.' 

Some similar kind of rebuke is, perhaps, the best answer to 
give. 

A well-known author once received a letter from a peer with 
whom he was slightly acquainted, asking him whether he was 
the author of a certain article in the EdinJjurgh Review. He 
replied that he never made communications of that kind, except 
to intimate friends, selected by himself for the purpose, when 
he saw tit. His refusal to answer, however, pointed him out — 
which, as it happened, he did not care for — as the author. But 
a case might occur, in which the revelation of the authorship 
might involve a friend in some serious difficulties. In any such 
case, he might have answered something in this style : 'I have 
received a letter purporting to be from your lordship, but the 
matter of it induces me to suspect that it is a forgery by some 
mischievous trickster. The writer asks whether I am the 
author of a certain article. It is a sort of question which no 
one has a right to ask ; and I think, therefore, that every one 
is bound to discourage such inquiries by answering them — 
whether one is or is not the author — with a rebuke for asking 
impertinent questions about private matters. I say ' private,' 
because, if an article be libellous or seditious, the law is open, 
and any one may proceed against the publisher, and compel 
him eitlier to give up the author, or to bear the penalty. If, 
again, it contains false statements, these, coming from an 
anonymous pen, may be simply contradicted. And if the 
arguments be unsound, the obvious course is to refute them. 
But who wrote it, is a question of idle or of mischievous curi- 
osity, as it relates to the private concerns of an individual. 

' If I were to ask your lordship, 'Do you spend your income? 
or lay by ? or outrun ? Do you and your lady ever have an 
altercation ? AYas she your first love ? or were you attached to 
Bome one else before V If I were to ask such questions, your 
lordship's answer would probably be, to desire the footman to 
show me out. !N"ow, the present inquiry I regard as no less 
unjustifiable, and relating to private concerns: and, therefore, I 



Essay vi.] Annotations. 69 

think every one bound, when so questioned, always, whether he 
is the author or not, to meet the inquiry with a rebuke. 

'Hoping that my conjecture is right, of the letter's being a 
forgery, I remain,' &c. 

Li any case, however, in which a refusal to answer does not 
convey any information, the best way, perhaps, of meeting im- 
pertinent inquiries, is by saying, ' Can you keep a secret V and 
•when the other answ^ers, that he can, you may reply, ' Well, so 
can L' 

' The power to feign when there is no remedy? 

This power is certainly a dangerous one to possess, because 
one will be tempted to say, again and again, and on slighter 
and slighter occasions, 'Now, there is no remedy; there is 
nothing for it but to feign :' that is, perhaps, there is no other 
mode of effecting the object you have in view. 

Certainly it is a nobler thing to have the jpower and not to 
use it, than to abstain from feigning, through incapacity. But 
there are few cases, and to most people none, in which it is 
justifiable- It is indeed quite allowable for a general to deceive 
the enemy by stratagenxs (fio called from that very circumstance) 
because where no confidence is reposed, none can be violated. 
And again it is a kind of toar that is carried on between police- 
men and thieves. In dealing with madmen, again, there is no 
more fraud in deceiving them than in angling for trout with an 
artificial fly ; because you are not really dealing with fellow- 
inen. But -R-ith the exception of such cases, feigning cannot be 
justified. 

' Dissi-mulation is hut a faint hind of ^liay? 

Wliat Bacon says of the inexpediency of all insincere proceed- 
ings is very true. Nothing but the right can ever be the expedient, 
since that can never be true expediency which would sacrifice a 
greater good to a less, — ' For what shall it profit a man, if he 
shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul.' It will be 
found that all frauds, like the ' wall daubed with untempered 
mortar,' with which men think to buttress up an edifice, tend 
to the decay of that which they are devised to support. This 
truth, however, wall never be steadily acted on by those who 
have no moral detestation of falsehood. It is not given to 



70 Of Simulation and Dissimulation. [Essay vi. 

tliose who do not prize straiglitforwarclness for its own sake to 
perceive that it is the wisest course. The maxim that ' honesty 
is the best policy' is one which, j^erhaps, no one ever is habitually 
guided by in practice. An honest man is always h^ore it, and a 
knave is generally hehind it. He does not find out, till too late, 

' What a tangled web we weave 
When first we practise to deceive.' 

]^o one, in fact, is capable of fully apj)reciating the ultimate 
expediency of a devoted adherence to Truth, save the divine 
Being, who is ' the Truth ;' because He alone comprehends the 
whole of the vast and imperfectly -revealed scheme of Providence, 
and alone can see the inmost recesses of the human heart, and 
alone can foresee and judge of the remotest consequences of 
human actions. 



ESSAY YII. OF PARENTS AND CHILDREN. 

THE jojs of parents are secret, and so are their griefs and 
fears ; they cannot utter the one, nor they will not' utter 
the other. Children sweeten labours, but they make misfor- 
tunes more bitter ; they increase the cares of life, but they 
mitigate the remembrance of death. The perpetuity by genera- 
tion is common to beasts ; but memory, merit, and noble works, 
are proper to men — and surely a man shall see the noblest 
works and foundations have proceeded from childless men, 
which have sought to express the images of their minds, where 
those of their bodies have failed — so the care of posterity is 
most in them that have no posterity. They that are the iirst 
raisers of their houses are most indulgent towards their chil- 
dren, beholding them as the continuance, not only of their kind, 
but of their work ; and so both children and creatures. 

The diiFerence in aifection of parents towards their several 
children is many times unequal, and sometimes unworthy, 
especially in the mother; as Solomon saith, 'A wise son re- 
joiceth the father, but an ungracious son shames the mother." 
A man shall see, where there is a house full of children, one or 
two of the eldest respected, and the youngest made wantons ; 
but in the midst some that are as it were forgotten, who, many 
times, nevertheless, prove the best. The illiberality of parents, 
in allowance towards their childi-en, is a harmfur error, and 
makes them base, acquaints them with shifts, makes them sort* 
with mean company, and makes them surfeit more when they 
come to plenty ; and therefore the proof is best when men keep 
their authority towards their children, but not their purse. Men 
have a foolish maimer (both parents, and schoolmasters, and ser- 
vants), in creating and breeding an emulation between brothers 



' Nor they will not. Nor will they. ^ Proverbs x. 1. 

* Harmful. Pernicious. 

' Sleepy poppies harmful harvests yield.' — Dryden. 

* Sort. To associate with; to consort. 'Metals sort and herd with other 
metals in the earth.' — Woodward. 



72 Of Parents and Cldldren. [Essay vii. 

during cliildlioocl, which many times sorteth' to discord when 
they are men, and disturbeth families. The Itahans make 
little difference between children and nephews, or near kinsfolk ; 
but so they be of the lump they cai'e not, though they pass not 
through their own body — and, to say truth, in nature it is 
much a like matter; insomuch that we see a nephew some- 
times resembleth an uncle, or a kinsman, more than his own 
parents, as the blood happens. Let parents chuse betimes the 
vocations and courses they mean their children should take, 
for then they are most flexible; and let them not too much 
apply themselves to the disposition of their children, as think- 
ing they will take best to that which they have most mind to. 
It is true, that if the affection,^ or aptness, of the children be 
extraordinary, then it is good not to cross it ; but generally the 
precept is good, ' Optimum elige, suave et facile illud faciet con- 
suetudo." Younger brothers are commonly fortunate, but sel- 
dom or never where the elder are disinherited. 



ANNOTATIONS. 

^ Let parents chuse hetimes the vocations and courses they mean 
their children should take. . . . And let them not too 
much apply themselves to the dispositions of tlidr children^ 

It is only in very rare and extreme cases, that Bacon allows 
the inclination of children to be followed in the choice of a 
profession. But he surely makes too little allowance (and, 
perhaps, the majority of parents do so) for the great diversity 
of natural faculties. It is not only such marvellous geniuses 
as occur but in five out of a million, that will succeed in one 
course far better than in any other. Numbers of men who 
would never attain any extraordinary eminence in anything, 



* Sort. To issue in (from sortir). 

' All my pains is sorted to no proof.' — ShaJcespere. 
' Affection, Strong inclination to. ' All the precepts of Christianity command 
B to temper our affections towards all things below.' — Temple. 

* ' Chuse the best, and custom will render it agreeable and easy.' 



Essay vii.] Annotations. T3 

are yet so constituted as to make a very respectable figure in 
the department that is suited for them, and to fall below medio- 
crity in a ditferent one. 

The world has been compared by some to a board covered 
with holes of many various shapes, and pegs fitted for each, but 
which are scattered about at random, so that it is a mere 
chance whether a peg falls into the hole that fits it. 

A. B. was the son of a schoolmaster who had a great love 
of literature. The son had a perfect hatred of it, and was a mere 
dunce at his book. Various attempts were made, which proved 
perfect failures, to train him to some of what are called the 
learned professions ; and he was, to all appearance, turning out 
what they call a ' ne'er-do-weel.' As a last resource he was 
sent out to a new colony. There he was in his element ; for, 
when at school, though dull at learning and soon forgetting 
what he had read, he never saw a horse or a carriage, once, that 
he did not always recognise ; and he readily understood all that 
belonged to each. In the colony he became one of the most 
thriving settlers ; skilful in making roads, erecting mills, drain- 
ing, cattle-breeding, &c., and was advanced to a situation of 
trust in the colony. And it is worth remarking that he became 
a very steady and well-conducted man, having been before the 
reverse. For it adds greatly to a young man's temptations to 
fall into habits of idleness and dissipation, if he is occupied in 
some pursuit in which he despairs of success, and for which he 
has a strong disinclination. 

C. D., again, was at a university, and was below the average 
in all academical pursuits ; but he w^as the greatest mechanical 
genius in the unversity, not excepting the professors. He never 
examined any machine, however complex, that he could not 
with his own hands construct a model of it, and sometimes with 
improvements. He w^ould have made a first-rate engineer ; but 
family arrangements caused him to take Orders. He was a 
diligent and conscientious clergyman, but a dull and common- 
place one ; except that, in repairing, and altering, and fitting 
up his parsonage and his church, he was unrivalled. In this 
sense no one could be more edifying. 

When, however, a youth is supposed to have, and believes 
himself to have, a great turn for such and such a profession, you 
should make sure that he understands what the profession is, 
Y 



H Of Parents and Children. [Essay vii. 

and has faculties for what it really does require. A youth, e. ^., 
who is auxious to enter the Navy, and thinks only of sailing 
about to various countries, having an occasional brush with an 
enemy, and leading altogether a jolly life, without any notion of 
the study, and toils, and privations he will have to go through, 
should have his views corrected. 

E. F. was thought by his friends to have made this mistake ; 
and when, at his earnest entreaty, he was sent to sea, they 
secretly begged the captain to make his life as unpleasant 
as possible, being anxious to sicken him. He was accordingly 
snubbed, and rated, and set to the most laborious duties, and 
never commended or encouraged. But he bore all, and did all, 
with unflinching patience and diligence. At last the captain 
revealed the whole to him, saying, ' I can carry on this disguise 
no longer ; you are the finest young man I ever had under 
me, and I have long admired your conduct while I pretended 
to scold you.' But perhaps part of his good conduct may have 
sprung from the cause which Bacon alludes to in the last 
sentence of his Essay on Marriage. 

G. 11., who had, as a youth, a vehement longing to go to 
sea, was positively interdicted by his father. Hence, though 
possessing very good abilities, and not without aspirations after 
excellence, he never could be brought to settle down steadily to 
anything, but broke off from every promising 2:)ursuit that he 
was successively engaged in, in pursuit of some phantom. 

It is observable that a parent who is unselfish, and who is 
never thinking of personal inconvenience, but always of the 
children's advantage, will be likely to make them selfish ; for she 
will let that too plainly appear, so as to fill the child with an 
idea that everything is to give way to him, and that his concerns 
are an ultimate end. N'ay, the very pains taken with him in 
strictly controlling him, heightens his idea of his own vast 
importance : whereas a parent who is selfish will be sure to 
accustom the child to sacrifice his own convenience, and to 
understand that he is of much less importance than the parent. 
This, by the way, is only one of many cases in which selfishness 
is caught from those who have least of it. 



ESSAY VIII. OF MARRIAGE AND SINGLE 
LIFE. 

HE tlicat liath wife and cliildren liatli given hostages to 
fortune ; for tliey are impediments to great enterprises, - 
either of virtue or miscliief. Certainly the best works, and of 
greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried 
or childless men, which, both in affection and m^ans, have 
married and endowed the public. Yet it were great reason 
that those that have children should have greatest care of future 
times, unto which they know they must transmit their dearest 
pledges. Some there are, who, though they lead a single life, 
yet their thoughts do end with themselves, and account future 
times impertinencies ;\ nay, there are some other that account 
wife and children but as bills of charges f nay, more, there are 
some foolish rich covetous men that take a pride in having no 
children, because they may be thought so much the richer ; for, 
perhaps, they have heard some talk, ' Such a one is a great rich 
man,' and another except to it, 'Yea, but he hath a great charge 
of children,' as if it were an abatement to his riches. But the 
most ordinary cause of a single life is liberty, especially in 
certain self-pleasing and humorous^ minds, which are so sensible 
of every restraint, as* they will go near to think their girdles 
and garters to be bonds and shackles. Unmarried men are best 
friends, best masters, best servants, but not always best subjects, 



^ Impertinencies. Things wholly irrelevant ; things of little or no importance. 
' matter and impertinency mixed, 
Reason and madness.' — Shakespei-e. 
'There are many subtle impertinences learnt in schools.' — Watts. 
° Charges. Cost ; expense. 

' I'll be at charges for a looking-glass, 
And entertain a score or two of tailors.' — Shakespere. 
' Humorous. Governed by one's own fancy or predominant inclination. 

' I am known to be a humorous patrician.' — Shakespere. 
' He that would learn to pass a just sentence upon men and things, must beware 
of a fanciful temper, and a humorous conduct in affairs.' — Watts. 

' Or self-conceited, play the humorous Platonist.' — Drayton. 
* As. That. See page 23. 



76 Of Marriage and Single Life. [Essay viii. 

for tliey are light to run away, and almost all fugitives are of 
that condition. A single life doth well with clmrchmen, for 
charity will hardly water the ground where it nnist first fill a 
pool. It is indifferent for judges and magistrates ; for if they 
be facile and corrupt, you shall have a servant five times worse 
than a wife. For soldiers, I find the generals commonly, in 
their hortatives, put men in mind of their wives aiid children : 
and I think the despising of marriage among the Turks maketh 
the vulgar soldier more base. Certainly wife and children are 
a kind of discipline of humanity: and single men, though they 
be many times more charitable, because their means are less 
exhaust,' yet, on the other side, they are more cruel and hard- 
hearted (good to make severe inquisitors), because their tender- 
ness is not so oft called upon. Grave natures, led by custom, 
and therefore constant, are commonly loving husbands, as was 
said of Ulysses, ' Yetulam suam praetulit immortalitati." Chaste 
women are often proud and froward, as presuming upon the 
merit of their chastity. It is one of the best bonds, both of 
chastity and obedience, in the wife, if she thinks her husband 
wise, which she will never do if she find him ^'ealous. AVives 
are young men's mistresses, companions for middle age, and old 
men's nurses, so as a man may have a quarrel' to marry when 
he will ; but ^^et he was reputed one of the .^'ise men that made 
answer to the question wdien a man should marry — ' A young 
man not yet, an elder man not at all.'* It is often seen that 
bad husbands have very good wives ; whether it be that it 
raiseth the price of their husband's kindness when it comes, or 
that the Avives take a pride in their j^atience ; but this never 
fails, if the bad husbands were of their own chusiug, against 
their friends' consent : for then they will be sure to make good 
their own folly. 



* Exhaust Exhausted. 

' The wealth 
Of the Canaries -was exhaust the health 
Of his good Majei5ty to celebrate.' — Habington. 

* ' He preferred hi.« old woman to immortality.' — Plut. Gryll. 1. 

' Quarrel. A reason ; a plea. (Perhaps from Quare, wherefore, used in law 
for a plea in trespass.) Or perhaps this oldest use of it for reason or plea, is the 
original meaning of querela, retained in querulous — putting forth a pitiful plea. 

' He thought he had a good quarrel to attack him.' — Holinshed. 

* Thales. Vid. Diog. Laert. i. 26. 



Essay viii.] Annotations. 77 

ANTITIIETA ON WIFE AND CHILDREN. 

]>R0. CONTHA. 

' Charitas reipubliese incipit a familia. ' Qui uxorem duxit, et liberos susce- 

' Tiie love of country has its rue in pit, obsides fortunre dedit. 

family affection.' ' He that has a wife and children has 

given hostages to fortime.' 

'Uxor et liberi disciplina quajdam 

humanitatis ; at cajlibes tetriei et severi. ' Brutorum eternitas soboles ; virorura 

' A wife and children are a sm-t of fama, merita, et instituta. 
training in courtesy and kindliness; ' The perpetuation of hrtttes is off- 
while single men, on the other liajid, are spring ; hut that of man is their glory, 
hard and severe.' their deserts, and their institutions.' 

'Caelibatus et orbitas ad nil aliiul ' CEconomica) rationes publicas ple- 

conferunt, quam ad fugam. runque evertunt. 

'Celibacy and absence of kindred are ' Family considerations often overthrow 

a qualification only for flight.' public ones.' 



ANNOTATIONS. 

It is remarkable that Bacon does not at all advert to the 
notion of the superior holiness of a single life, or to the enforced 
celibacy of the Roman Catholic clergy. 

It is hardly necessary to remark — much less to prove — that, 
even supposing there were some spiritual advantage in celibacy, 
it ought to be completely voluntary from day to day, and not 
to be enforced by a life-long vow or rule. For in this case, 
even though a person should not repent of such a vow, no one 
can be sure that there is not such repentance. Supposing that 
even a large majority of priests, and monks, and nuns, have no 
desire to marry, every one of them may not unreasonably be 
suspected of such a desire, and no one of them, consequently, 
can be secure against the most odious suspicions. No doubt 
there are many Roman Catholic clergymen (as there are Pro- 
testant) who sincerely prefer celibacy. But, in the one case we 
have a ground of assurance of this, which is wanting in the 
other. No one can be sure, because no proof can be given, 
that a vow of perpetual celibacy may not some time or other be 
a matter of regret. But he who continues to live single while 
continuing to have a free choice, gives a fair evidence of a con- 
tinued preference for that life.' 

* It is worth observing, by the way, that if any one should maintain that 
enforced celibacy of the clergy is essential to such an unrestricted intercouse as is, 

7* 



78 Of Marriage and Single Life. [Essay viii. 

Accordingly many of tlie most intelligent of the Roman 
Catholic laity are very desirous of having the law of celibacy 
removed. It is not reckoned an article of the taitli, but merely 
a matter of discipline. And accordingly, those of the Greek and 
Armenian Churches who have consented to acknowledge Eomish 
supremacy, have been allowed to retain their own practice as to 
this matter; the Armenian Church allowing the marriage of 
their priests, and the Greek Church requiring the parish priests 
to be married. 

When this was urged by an intelligent Roman Catholic 
layman, to the late Archbishop Murray, he replied that but few 
Armenian priests do avail themselves of their privilege. This, 
answered the other, is a strong reason on my side ; for the 
advantage which you think there is in an unmarried priesthood 
is secured in a great majority of instances, with the very great 
additional advantage that their celibacy is there understood to 
be completely voluntary. 

But doubtless the Roman hierarchy have been much in- 
fluenced by the consideration which Bacon mentions, that 
' single men are the best servants.' It was wished to keep the 
clergy, who are the employed servants of the Roman Church, 
as distinct as i^ossible from the Body of the people. 

In the Greek Church, though every parish priest must be a 
married man, the Bishops never are, being always taken from 
among the monks. The result of this is (1) that the parish 
priests, since they cannot rise any higher, are regarded as an 
inferior order of men ; and, according to the testimony of all 
traveller, are a very low set. And (2) the bisliop who has to 



on religious grounds, desirable between the pastor and the females of his flock, and 
should allege that a clergyman to whom marriage is permitted could not have any 
confidential communication with them, for fear of exciting rumours of some matri- 
monial designs — if any one should maintain this, he would hardly be thought 
serious. He would be answered — if, indeed, he were considered worth an answer — 
that the reasonable inference is the very opposite. Any gi-oundless rumours of a 
tender attachment between parties who were/rec to marry, -would be put an end 
to by their not marrying. But if their marriage were prohibited by law, it would 
be necessary to avoid any such intimacy as might possibly lead to the existence or 
to the suspicion, of that sort of attachment which would naturally lead to matri- 
mony. But it is remarkable that many persons to whom all this is quite clear, 
yet use, in a precisely parallel case, the very same kind of reasoning Avhich, in 
this case, they would deride. — See Remains of Bishop Copleston, p. 42. 



Essay viii.] Annotations. T9 

goyern, tlirougli the medium of the priests, all the parishes of his 
diocese, is necessarily a person destitute of all experience. It is 
as if the command of a fleet were given (as is sometimes done 
by the Kussians) to a military officer. 

A parish priest in the Greek Church, if his wife dies, is per- 
manently suspended. For none can officiate who is not 
married ; and he is not allowed to marry again. It is thus 
they interpret, as some Protestant divines also have done 
(besides Doctor Primrose), the rule that he is to be 'the 
husband of one wife.' 

The rule is manifestly and confessedly of doubtful inter- 
pretation ; some understanding it of a prohibition merely of 
polygamy ; and others, as relating merely to conjugal fidelity. 
This last has more to be said in its favour than would appear 
from our translation, on account of the double meaning in 
the original of Vwt], and also of K.vr\p, in Greek, and Yir in 
Latin. 

It has been urged against this interpretation, that such a rule 
would have been superfluous ; but surely the same might be 
said against the rule that the deacon should be ' no striker,' and 
' not given to much wine.' 



ESSAY IX. OF ENVY. 

THERE be none of tlie affections whicli have been noted to 
fascinate or bewitch, but love and envy ; they both have 
vehement wishes, they frame themselves readily into imagina- 
tions and suggestions, and they come easily into the eye, espe- 
cially npon the presence of the objects, which are the points 
that conduce to fascination, if any such thing there be. AVe 
see, likewise, the Scripture calleth envy an evil eye, and the 
astrologers call the evil influences of the stars evil aspects, so 
that still there seemeth to be acknowledged, in the act of envy, 
an ejaculation' or irradiation of the eye ; nay, some have been 
so curious'' as to note, that the times when the stroke or per- 
cussion of an envious eye doth most hurt, are when the party 
envied is beheld in glory or triumph, for that sets an edge upon 
envy; and, besides, at such times, the sj)irits of the person 
envied do come forth most into the outward parts, and so meet 
the blow. 

But, leaving these curiosities' (though not unworthy to be 
thought on in fit place), we will handle* what persons are apt 
to envy others; what 23ersons are most subject to be envied 
themselves ; and what is the difference between public and 
private envy. 

A man that hath no virtue in himself ever envieth virtue in 
others — ^fbr men's minds will either feed upon their own good, 
or upon other's evil ; and wlio^ wanteth the one will prey upon 

* Ejaculation. Tlce act of throwing or darting out. ' Which hrief prayers of 
our Saviour (Matt. xxvi. 39) are properly such as we call ejaculations — an elegant 
similitude from the shooting or throwing out a dart or arrow.' — South. 

' Its active rays ejaculated thence. 
Irradiate all the wide circumference.' — Blachmore. 

* Curious. Subtle; minutely inquiring ; accurate ; precise. ' Both these senses 
embrace their objects with a more curious discrimination.' — Holden. ' Having in- 
quired of the curiozisest and most observing makers of such tools.' — JBoyle. 

' For curious I cannot be with you.' — Shakespere. 
Ingenious. ' To devise curious works.' — Exodus xxxv. 32. 

' Curiosities. Niceties. * Equalities are so weighed, that curiosity in neither 
can make choice of cither's moiety.' — Shakespere. 

* Handle. To treat ; to discuss. 

' He left nothing fitting for the purpose 
Untouched or shghtly handled in discourse.' — Shakespere. 

* Who. He who. ' Who talks much, must talk in vain.' — Gay. 



Essay ix.] Of Envy. 81 

the other ; and whoso' is out of hope to attain another's virtue, 
will seek to come at even hand, by depressing another's fortune. 

A man that is busy and inquisitive is commonly envious; 
for to know much of other men's matters cannot be because all 
that ado' may concern his own estate ; therefore it must needs 
be that he taketh a kind of play-pleasure in looking upon the 
fortunes of others; neither can he that mindeth but his own 
business find much matter for envy ; for envy is a gadding 
passion, and walketh the streets, and doth not keep home : ' Non 
est curiosus, quin idem sit malevolus.'^ 

Men of noble birth are noted to be envious towards new 
men when they rise : for the distance is altered ; and it is like 
a deceit of the eye, that when others come on they think them- 
selves go back. 

Deformed persons and eunuchs, and old men and bastards, 
are envious ; for he that cannot possibly mend his own case, 
will do what he can to impair another's ; except these defects 
light upon a very brave and heroical nature, which thinketh to 
make his natural wants part of his honour ; in that it should be 
said, ' That an eunuch, or a lame man, did such great matters ;' 
aifecting* the honour of a miracle: as it was in Narses the 
eunuch, and Agesilaus and Tamerlane, that were lame men. 

The same is the case of men who rise after calamities and 
misfortunes ; for they are as men fallen out with the times, and 
think other men's harms a redemption of their own sufferings. 

They that desire to excel in too many matters, out of levity 
and vain glory, are ever envious, for they cannot want work — 
it being impossible but many, in some one of those things, 
should surpass them ; which was the character of Adrian the 
emperor,^ that mortally envied poets and painters, and artificers 
in works wherein he had a vein' to excel. 

Lastly, near kinsfolks and fellows in office, and those that 



Whoso. Whoever. ' Whom offereth praise glorifieth me.' — Ps. 1. 23. 
"^ Ado. Bustle — really the infinitive mood of a verb equivalent to the ex- 
pression ' to do.' — Used in tlie plural adoes in the old Scottish Acts of Parliament. 
^Rev. H. Cotton. 

' Let's follow, to see the end of this ado.' 
' Much Ado about Nothing.' — Shakeapere. 

* 'There is none curious that is not also malevolent.' — Cf Pint, de Curios. 1. 

* Affecting. See page 1. ^ Spartian. Vit. Adrian. 15. 

* Humour ; fancy. ' Thou troublest me ; I am not in the vein.' — Shakespere.' 



82 Of Envy. • [Essay ix. 

are bred together, are more apt to envy their equals when they 
are raised ; for it doth upbraid unto them their own fortunes, 
and pointeth at them, and cometh oftener into their remem- 
brance, and incurreth' hkewise more into the note of others ; 
and envy ever redoubleth from speech and fame. Cain's envy 
was the more vile and malignant towards his brother Abel, 
because, when his sacriiice w^as better accepted, there was 
nobody to look on. Thus much for those that are apt to envy. 

Concerning those that are more or less subject to envy. 
First, persons of eminent virtue, when they are advanced, are 
less envied, for their fortune seemeth but due unto them ; and 
no man envieth the payment of a debt, but rewards and liberality 
rather. Again, envy is ever joined with the comparing of a 
man's self ; and where there is no comparison, no envy — and 
therefore kings are not envied but by kings. Nevertheless, it 
is to be noted, that unworthy persons are most envied at their 
first coming in, and afterwards overcome it better ; whereas, 
contrary wise,^ persons of worth and merit are most envied when 
their fortune continueth long ; for by that time, though their 
virtue be the same, yet it hath not the same lustre, for fresh 
men grow up to darken it. 

Persons of noble blood are less envied in their rising, for it 
seemeth but right done to their birth : besides, there seemeth 
not much added to their fortune ; and envy is as the sunbeams, 
that beat hotter upon a bank, or steep rising ground, than upon 
a flat ; and, for the same reason, those that are advanced by 
degrees are less envied than those that are advanced suddenly, 
and ' per saltum.'^ 

Those that have joined with their honour great travels, cares, 
or perils, are less subject to envy ; for men think that they 
earn their honours hardly, and pity them sometimes, and pity 
ever healeth envy ; wherefore you shall observe, that the more 
deep and sober sort of politic persons, in their greatness, are 
ever bemoaning themselves what a life they lead, chanting a 
-'^quanta patimur ;'* not that they feel it so, but only to abate 



^ Incur. To pi-ess on. ' The mind of man is helped or hindered in its opera- 
tions according to the different quality of external objects that incur into the 
-South. 
Contrariwise. On the contrary. ' ' At a bound.' 

■' How much we suffer !' 



Essay ix.] Of Envy. 83 

the edge of envy : but tliis is to be understood of business tliat 
is laid upon men, and not such as they call unto themselves ; 
for nothing increaseth envy more than an unnecessary and 
ambitious engrossing of business — and nothing doth extinguish 
^nxj more than tor a great person to preserve all other interior 
officers in their full rights and pre-eminences of their places; 
for, by that means, there be so many screens between him and 
envy. 

Above ail, those are most subject to envy which "carry the 
greatness of their fortunes in an insolent and proud maimer — 
being never well but while they are showing how great they 
are, either by outward pomp, or by triumphing over all opposi- 
tion or competition : whereas wise men will rather do sacrifice 
to envy, in suffering themselves, sometimes of purpose, to be 
crossed and overborne in things that do not much concern them. 
Notwithstanding, so much is true, that the carriage of greatness 
in a plain and open manner (so it be without arrogancy* and 
vain-glory), doth draw less envy than if it be in a more crafty 
and cunning fashion ; for in that course a man doth but disavow 
fortune, and seemeth to be conscious of his own want in worth, 
and doth but teach others to envy him. 

Lastly, to conclude this part, as we said in the beginning 
that the act of envy had somewhat in it of witchcraft, so there 
is no other cure of envy but the cure of witchcraft ; and that is, 
to remove the lot (as they call it), and to lay it upon another ; 
for which purpose, the wiser sort of great pei-sons bring in ever 
upon the stage somebody upon whom to derive^ the envy that 
would come upon themselves ; sometimes upon ministers and 
servants, sometimes upon colleagues and associates, and the 
like ; 'and, for that turn, there are never wanting some persons 
of violent and undertaking' natures, who, so they may have 
power and business, will take it at any cost. 

Kow, to speak of public envy. There is yet some good in 



'Of. Bii. Of purpose ; by design ; intentionally. ' They do of right belong 
to you. — Tillotson. 

^ AiTogancy. Arrogance. ' Let not arrogancy come out of your mouth.' — • 
1 Samuel xi. 

^ Derive. To divert, to turn the course of. ' Company abates the torrent of a 
common odium by deriving it into many channels.' — South. 

* Undertaking. Enterprising. 'Men of renown, that is, of undertaking and 
adventurous natures.' — Sir Walter Raleigh. 



84 Of Envy. [Essay ix. 

pnblic envy, whereas in private there is none ; for public envy 
is as an ostracism, that eclipseth men when they grow too great ; 
and therefore it is a bridle also to great ones to keep within 
bounds. 

This envy, being in the Latin word ^invidia/ goeth in the 
modern languages by the- name of discontentment, of which we 
shall speak in handling sedition. It is a disease in a State 
like to infection ; for as infection spreadeth upon tliat wliich is. 
sound, and tainteth it, so, when envy is gotten once into a 
State, it traduceth even the best actions thereof, and turneth 
them into an ill odour; and therefore there is little won by 
intermingling of plausible' actions; for that doth ai'gue but a 
weakness and feai' of envy, wliich hurteth so much the more ; as. 
it is likewise usual in infections, which, if you fear them, you 
call them upon you. 

Tliis public envy seemeth to bear chiefly upon principal 
officers or ministers, rather than upon kings and States them- 
selves. But this is a sure rule, that if the envy upon the 
minister be great, when the cause of it in him is small, or if 
the envy be general in a manner upon all the ministers of an 
estate, then the envy (though hidden) is truly upon the State 
itself. And so much of public envy or discontentment, and the 
difference thereof from private envy, which was handled in the 
first place. 

We will add this in general, touching the affection of envy, 
that of all other affections it is the most importune^ and con- 
tinual ; for of other affections there is occasion given but now 
and then ; and therefore it was well said, ' Invidia festos dies 
non agit," for it is ever working upon some or other. And it 
is also noted, that love and envy do make a man pine, which 
other affections do not, because they are not so continual. It 
is also the vilest affection, and the most depraved ; for which 
cause it is the proper attribute of the Devil, who is called ' The 



' Plausible. Deserving to meet mth applause. ' I hope they will plausibly 
receive our attempt.' — Brawn. 

* Importune. Importimate ; troublesome from frequency. 
' More shall thy penitent sighs, his endless mercy please 
That their importu7ie suits which dreame that words God's wrath appease.' — 

Surrey, 
* ' Envy keeps no holidays.' 



Essay ix.] Annotations. 85 

envious man, tliat sowetli tares amongst the wlieat by night ;' as 
it always cgmeth to pass, that envy worketh subtilely, and in 
the dark, and to the prejudice of good things, such as is the 

wheat 

ANTITHETA ON ENVY. 

Pro, CJontra, 

'Invidia in rebuspublicis, tanquam 'Nemo virtuti invidiam recoucilla- 

ealubris ostraeisrausu verit prseter mortem. 

'In public affairs, envy acts the part 'Nothing can reeotieile envy to mrtm 

of a iDholesonie ostracisnx.' but d£ath. 

* Invidla virtutes laboribus exercet, 
Kt Juno Herculem, 

' Enny acts toicards the virtues as 
Juno did towards Hercules; she con- 
demns them to toilsome lahours.' 



ANNOTATIONS. 

In Adam Smith's Tlieory of Moral Serdhnents^ the following 
admirable remarks are made on the envy that attends a sudden 
rise : — 

^The man who, by some sudden revolution of fortune, is 
lifted up all at once into a condition of life greatly above what 
he had formerly lived in, may be assured that the congratula- 
tions of his best friends are not all of them perfectly sincere. 
An upstart, tho-agh of the greatest merit, is generally disagree- 
able, and a sentiment of envy commonly j) re vents us from 
heartily sjanpathiziiig with his joy. If he has any judgment, 
he is sensible of this, and instead of appearing to be elated w4th 
his good fortune, he endeavours, as much as he can, to smother 
his joy, and keep down that elevation of mind with which his 
new circumstances naturally inspire him. He affects the same 
plainne&s of dress, and the same modesty of behaviour, which 
became him in his former station. He redoubles his attention 
to his old friends, and endeavours more than ever to be humble, 
assiduous, and complaisant. And this is the behaviour Avhich 
in his situation we most approve of; because, we expect, it 
seems, that he should have more sympathy with our envy and 
avei-sion to his happiness, than we have with his happiness. 
It is seldom that with all this he succeeds. We suspect the 
8 



86 Of Envy. [Essay ix. 

sincerity of his humility, and lie grows weary of this constraint. 
In a little time, therefore, he generally leaves all his old friends, 
behind him, some of the meane&t of them excepted, who may^ 
perhaps, condescend to become his dependents : nor does he 
always acquire any new ones ; the pride of his new connections 
is as much aifronted at finding him their ecjual, as that of his 
old ones had been by his becoming their superior : and it requires 
the most obstinate and persevering modesty to atone for this 
m.ortification to either. He generally grows weary too soon, 
and is provoked, by the sullen and suspicious pride of the one, 
and by the saucy contempt of the other, to treat the first with 
neglect, and the second Avith petulance, till at last he grows 
habitually insolent, and forfeits the esteem of all. If the chief 
part of human happiness arises from the consciousness of being 
beloved, as I believe it does, those sudden changes of fortune 
seldom contribute much to happiness. He is happiest wlic 
advances more gradually to gi-eatness ; whom the Public destines 
to every step of his preferment long before he arrives at it ; in 
whom, upon that account, when it comes, it can excite no ex- 
travagant joy, and with regard to whom it cannot reasonably 
create either any jealousy in those he overtakeSjOr any envy in 
those he leaves behind.'^ 

^Persons of eminent virtue, vjhen the]/ are advmicedy are less 



Bacon might have remarked that, in one respect a rise by 
merit exposes a man to more envy than that by personal favour, 
through family connection, private friendship, <fec. For in this 
latter case, the si/stem itself of preferring private considerations 
to public, is chiefly blamed, but the {ndividual thus advanced is 
regarded much in the same way as one who is dorn to an 
estate or a title. But when any one is advanced on the score 
of desert and qualifications, the system is approved, but the 
individual is more envied, because his advancement is felt as an 
affront to all who think themselves or their OAvn friends more 
worthy. ' It is quite right to advance men of great merit ; but 
by this rule, it is I, or my friend So-and-so that should have 



^ Adam Smith's Hieory of Moral Sentiments, chap. v. 



Essay ix.] Annotations. 87 

been preferred.' When, on the other hand, a bishop or a 
minister appoints his own son or private friend to some ojfice, 
every one else is left free to think ^ If it had gone by merit, I 
should have been the man.' 

When any person of really eminent virtue becomes the object 
of envy, the clamour and abuse by which he is assailed, is but 
the sign and accompaniment of his success in doing service to 
the Public. And if he is a truly wise man, he will take no more 
notice of it than the moon does of the howling of the dogs. 
Her only answer to them is ^ to shine on,' 

* This jpiihUc envy seemeth to hear chiefly upon jprindpal officers 
or ministers^ rather than iijpon kings? 

This is a very just remark, and it might have suggested an 
excellent argument (touched on in the Lessons on the British 
Constitution^) in favour of hereditary Royalty. It is surely a 
good thing that there should be some feeling of loyalty unalloyed 
bj envy, towards something in the Government. And this 
feeling concentrates itself among us, upon the Sovereign. But 
in a pure Republic, the abstract idea of the State — ^the Common- 
wealth itself — is too vague for the vulgar mind to take hold of 
with any loyal aifection. The President, and every one of the 
public officers, has been raised from the ranks ; and the very 
circumstance of their having been so raised on the score of 
supposed iitness, makes them (as was observed above) the more 
obnoxious to envy, because their elevation is felt as an aifront 
to their rivals. 

An hereditary Sovereign, on the other hand, if believed to 
possess personal merit, is regarded as a Godsend ; but he does 
not hold his place by that tenure. 

In Aristotle's Rhetoric^ there is a Dissertation on Envy, 
Emulation, and Indignation (Nemesis), well worthy of Bacon ; 
who certainly was carried away into an undue neglect and dis- 
paragement of Aristotle by the absurd idolatry of ^\^liich he had 
been made the object. 

* Conculcatur enim cupide nimis ante metutum.' 



* See Introductory Lessons on the British Constitution, lesson L 



^oAY X. OF LOVE. 

^^^ fecage is more beholding* to love than the life of Man ; 
■^ for as to the stage, love is even matter of comedies, and 
now and then of tragedies ; but in life it doth much mischief, 
sometimes like a syren, sometimes like a fury. You may 
observe, that amongst all the great and worthy persons (whereof 
the memory remaiueth, either ancient or recent), there is not 
one that hath been transported to the mad degree of love ; which 
shows that great spirits and great business do keep out this 
weak passion. You must except, nevertheless, Marcus Antonius, 
the half-partner of the empire of Rome, and Appius Claudius, 
the decemvir and lawgiver ; whereof the former was indeed a 
voluptuous man, and inordinate, but the latter was an austere 
and wise man : and therefore it seems (though rarely, that love 
can find entrance, not only into an open heart, but also into a 
heart well fortified, if watch be not well kept. It is a poor 
saying of Epicurus, 'Satis magnum alter alteri theatrum sumus,'" 
— as if Man, made for the contemplation of heaven, and all 
noble objects, should do nothing but kneel before a little idol, 
and make himself a subject, though not of the mouth (as beasts 
are), yet of the eye, which was given him for higher purposes. 
It is a strange thing to note the excess of this passion, and 
how it braves the nature and value of things by this, that the 
speaking in a perpetual hyperbole is comely in nothing but in 
love ; neither is it merely in the phrase ; for whereas it hath 
been well said, ' That the arch flatterer, with whom all the petty 
flatterers have intelligence, is a man's self :' certainly the lover 
is more ; for there was never a proud man thought so absurdly 
well of himself as the lover doth of the person loved ; and 
therefore it was well said, ' That it is impossible to love and be 
wise." Neither doth this weakness appear to others only, and 
not to the party loved, but to the loved most of all, except the 



' Beholding. Beholden. 

' Thanks, lovely Virgins, now might we but know 
To whom we had been beholding for this love.' — Ford. 
' ' We are a sufficiently great spectacle to each other.' 
* ' Amare et sapere vix Deo conceditur.' — Pub. Syr. Sent. 15. 



Essay x.] Of Love. 89 

love be reciprocal ; for it is a true rule, that love is ever 
rewarded either with the reciprocal, or with an inward or secret 
contempt' ; by how much more then men ought to beware of this 
passion, which losetli not only other things, but itself. As 
for the other losses, the poet's relation doth well figure them ; 
' That he that preferreth Helena, quitted the gifts of Juno and 
Pallas ;' for whosoever esteemeth too much of amorous aifection, 
quitteth both riches and wisdom. This passion hath its floods 
in the very times of weakness, which are great prosperity and 
great adversity ; though this latter hath been less observed ; 
both which times kindle love, and make it more fervent, and 
therefore show it to be the child of folly. They do best who 
if they cannot but admit love, yet make it keep quarter,* and 
sever it wholly from their serious affairs and actions of life ; for 
if it check'' once with business, it troubleth men's fortunes and 
maketh men that they can no ways' be true to their own ends. 
I know not how, but martial men are given to love : I think it 
is, but as they are given to wine, for perils commonly ask to be 
paid in pleasures.^ There is in man's nature a secret inclination 
and motion towards love of others, which, if it be not spent 
upon some one or a few, doth naturally spread itself towards 
many, and maketh men become humane and charitable, as it 
is seen sometimes in friars. Nuptial love maketh mankind ; 
friendly love peii'ecteth it ; but wanton love corrupteth and 
embaseth^ it. 



' Quarter. Proper place (rarely used in the singular). 

' Swift to their several qtmriers hasted then 
The cumbrous elements.' — Hilton. 
' Check with. To interfere with ; to clash with. ' It was not comely or fitting 
that in prayers we should make a God or Saviour of any Saint in heaven ; neither 
was it fitting to make them check with our Saviour.' — Strype, 1535. 

' No ways. In any wise ; by no means. ' And being no ways a match for the 
fleet, we set sail to Athens.' — Swift. 

* It is remarked by Aristotle in his Politics that warlike nations are those who 
pay the highest regard to women. And this he suggests may have given rise to 
the fable of the love of Mars and Venus. 
' Embase. Degrade. 

' Love did embase him 
Into a kitchen-drudge.' — Old Ballad, 13th century, 

8* 



90 Of Love. [Essay 



ANNOTATIONS. 

* Men ought to l)eware of this jyassion, which loseth oiot only 
other things, hut itself^ . . . ' Whosoever esteemeth 
too much of amorous affection quitteth hoth riches and 
wisdom.'' 

The following passage is extracted from an article on Miss 
Austen's novels, in the Quarterly Review (No. 24, p. ST-t) which 
was reprinted — through a mistake — in the Remains of Sir W. 
Scott, though it was not written by him. 

' Bacon, in these days, would hardly have needed to urge so 
strongly the dethronement of the God of Love. Tlie prevailing 
fault is not now, whatever it may have been, to sacrifice all for 
love : — 

' Venit enim magnum donandi parca juventns, 
Nee tantiim Veneris quantum studiosa culinje.' 

Mischievous as is the extreme of sentimental enthusiasm, and 
a romantic and uncalculating extravagance of passion, it is not 
the one into which the young folks of the present day are the 
most likely to run. Prudential calculations are not indeed to be 
excluded in marriage : to disregard the advice of sober-minded 
friends on an important point of conduct is an imprudence we 
would by no means recommend ; indeed, it is a species of 
selfishness, if, in listening only to the dictates of passion, a man 
sacrifices to its gratification the happiness of those most dear to 
him as well as his own ; though it is not now-a-days the most 
prevalent form of selfishness. But it is no condemnation of a 
sentiment to say, that it becomes blameable when it interferes 
with duty, and is uncontrouled by conscience. The desire of 
riches, power, or distinction, — the taste for ease and comfort, — 
are to be condemned when they transgress these bounds ; and 
love, if it keep within them, even though it be somewhat tinged 
with enthusiasm, and a little at variance with wdiat the worldly 
call prudence, — that is, regard for pecuniary advantage, — may 
afford a better moral discipline to the mind than most other 
passions. It will not, at least, be denied, that it has often 
proved a powerful stimulus to exertion where others have 
failed, and has called forth talents unknown before, even to the 



Essay x.] Annotations. 91 

possessor. What thongli the pursuit may be fruitless, and the 
hopes visionary? The result may be a real and substantial 
benefit, though of another kind ; the vineyard may have been 
cultivated by digging in it for the treasure which is never to be 
found. What though the perfection with which imagination 
has decorated the beloved object, may, in fact, exist but in a 
slender degree ? Still they are believed in and admired as 
I'eal ; if not, the love is such as does not merit the name ; and 
it is proverbially true that men become assimilated to the cha- 
racter (that is, what they think the character) of the Being they 
fervently adore. Thus, as in the noblest exhibitions of the 
stage, though that which is contemplated be but a fiction, it 
may be realized in the mind of the beholder ; and, though 
grasping at a cloud, he may become worthy of possessing a real 
goddess. Many a generous sentiment, and many a virtuous 
resolution, have been called forth and matured by admiration of 
one, who may herself, perhaps, have been incapable of eithei-, 
It matters not what the object is that a man aspires to be 
worthy of, and proposes as a model of imitation, if he does but 
hel'iem it to be excellent. Morever, all doubts of success (and 
they are seldom, if ever, entirely wanting) must either produce 
or exercise humility ; and the endeavour to study another's 
interests and inclinations, and prefer them to one's own, may 
promote a habit of general benevolence which may outlast the 
present occasion. Everything, in short, which tends to abstract 
a man in any degree, or in any way, from self — ^from self- 
admiration and self-interest, — ^lias, so far at least, a beneficial 
influence on character.' 



ESSAY XI. OF GREAT PLACE. 

"jl /TEN ill great place are thrice servants — servants of the 
-^'-L sovereign or State, servants of fame, and servants of busi- 
ness; so as' tiiey liave no freedom, neither'' in their persons, 
nor'' in their actions, nor in their times. It is a strange desire 
to seek power and to lose liberty, or to seek power over others, 
and to lose power over a man's self. The rising unto place is 
laborious, and by pains men come to greater pains : and it is 
sometimes base and by indignities^ men come to dignities. The 
standing is slippery, and the regress is either a downfall, or at 
least an eclipse, which is a melancholy thing : ' Cum non sis qui 
fueris non esse cur velis vivere.'* Nay, men cannot retire when 
they would, neither will they when it were reason,' but are im- 
patient of privateness,^ even in age and sickness, which require 
the shadow ;' like old townsmen, that will be still sitting at 
their street door, though thereby they offer age to scorn. Cer- 
tainly great persons had need to borrow other men's opinions to 
think themselves happy, for if they judge by their own feeling, 
they cannot find it; but if they think with themselves what 
other men think of them, and tliat other men w^ould fain be as 
they are, then they are happy as it were by report, when, 
perhaps, they find the contrary within ; for they are the first 
that find their own griefs, though they be the last that find 
their own faults. Certainly, men in great fortunes are strangers 
to themselves, and while they are in the puzzle of business, they 
have no time to tend their health, either of body or mind : 'Illi- 



* As. Tliat See page 23. ^ 2v^eitlier nor — for either, or. 
^ Indignity. Meanness. 

' Fie on the pelf for which good name is sold, 
And honour with indignity debased.' — Spenser. 

* ' Since thou art no longer what thou wast, there is no reason why thou shouldst 
wish to live.' 

* Reason. Right ; reasonable. ' It is not reason that we should leave the word 
of God, and serve tables.' — Acts vt 2. 

* Privateness. Privacy; retirement. 'He drew him into the fatal circle from 
a resolved privateness at his house, when he would well have bent his mind to a 
retired course.' — Wotto?}, 

^ Shadow. Shade. 

' Here, father, take the shadoto of this tree 
For your good host.' — Shakespere. 



Essay xi.] Of Great Place. 93 

mors gravis incubat, qui notus nimis omnibus, ignotus moritur 
sibi." In place there is licence to do good and evil, whereof 
the latter is a curse ; for in evil, the best condition is not to 
will,'' the second not to can/ But power to do good is the 
true and lawful end of ^aspiring ; for good thoughts, though God 
accept* them, yet towards men are little better than good 
dreams, except they be put in act, and that cannot be without 
power and place, as the vantage and commanding ground. 
Merit and good works is the end of man'§ motion, and con- 
science^ of the same is the accomplishment of man's rest ; for if 
a man can be partaker of God's theatre, he shall likewise be 
partaker of God's rest : ' Et con versus Deus, ut aspiceret opera, 
qucB fecerunt manus suae, vidit quod omnia essent bona nimis ;'^ 
and then the Sabbath. In the discharge of thy place set before 
thee the best examples, for imitation is a globe' of precepts ; 
and after a time set before thee thine own example, and ex- 
amine thyself strictly whether thou didst not best at first. 
Neglect not also the examples of those that have carried them- 
selves ill in the same place ; not to set off thyself by taxing 
their memory, but to direct thyself what to avoid. Keform, 
therefore, without bravery* or scandal of former times and 
persons ; but yet set it down to thyself, as well to create good 
precedents as to follow them. Reduce things to the first 
institution, and observe wherein and how they have degene- 
rated; but yet ask counsel of both times — of the ancient 
time what is best, and of the later time what is fittest. Seek 



' Death falls heavily upon him, who, too well known to all men, dies imac- 
quainted with himself.' — Seneo. Thycst. xi. 401. 

^ To will. Ih be willing ; to desire. ' If any man icill do his will, he shall know 
of the doctrine whether it be of God.' — John vii. \1. 

' To can. To be able ; to have poiver. 

' Mecsenas and Agrippa who can most with Csesar.' — Dryden. 

* Accept. To regard favourably. ' In every nation, he that feareth Him and 
worketh righteousness is accepted with Him.' — Acts x. 85. 

'' Conscience. Consciousness. ' The reason why the simpler sort are movedwith 
authority is the conscience of their own ignorances.' — Hooker. 

* ' When God turned to behold the works which his hand had made. He saw 
that they were all very good.' — Genesis i. 

» Globe. A body. 

' Him around 
A globe of fiery seraphim enclosed.' — Milton. 

* Bravery. Bravado ; parade of defiance. 

' By Ashtaroth, thou shalt ere long lament 
Tliese braveries in irons.' — Milton. 



94: Of Great Place. [Essay xi. 

to make thy course regular, that men may know beforehand 
what they may expect ; but be not too positive and peremptory, 
and express thyself well when thou digressest from thy rules. 
Preserve the right of thy place, but stir not questions of juris- 
diction ; and rather assume thy right in silence, and de facto^ 
than voice^ it with claims and challenges. Preserve likewise 
the rights of inferior places, and think it more honour to direct 
in chief than to be busy in all. Embrace and invite helps and 
advices touching the execution of thy place ; and do not drive 
away such as bring thee information, as meddlers, but accept of 
them in good part. 

The vices of authority are chiefly four : delays, corruj)tion, 
roughness, and facility. For delays, give easy access ; keep 
times appointed : go through with that which is in hand, and 
interlace not business but of necessity. For corruption, do not 
only bind thine own hands or thy servants' hands from taking, 
but bind the hands of suitors also from oifering ; for integrity 
used doth the one, but integrity professed, and with a manifest 
detestation of bribery, doth the other ; and avoid not only the 
fiiult, but the suspicion. Whosoever is found variable, and 
changeth manifestly without manifest cause, giveth suspicion 
of corruption ; therefore, always, when thou changest thine 
opinion or course, profess it plainly, and declare it, together 
with the reasons that move thee to change, and do not think to ' 
steaP it, A servant or a favourite, if he be inward,* and no other 
apparent cause of esteem, is commonly thought but a by-way to 
close corruption. For roughness, it is a needless cause of dis- 
content : severity breedeth fear, but roughness breedeth hate. 
Even reproofs from authority ought to be grave, and not 
taunting. As for facility, it is worse than bribery, for bribes 
come but now and then ; but if importunity or idle respects" 

^ In fact. Really; virtually. 
^ Voice. To asse7-t ; to declare. 

' When I shall voice aloud how good 
He is, how great should be.' — Lovelace. 
^ Steal. To do secretly. 

' 'Twere good .to steal our marriage.' — Shahespere. 

* Inward. Intimate. 

' WTio is most inward with the noble duke.' — Shakespere. 
'All my inward friends abhorred mc.' — Job xix. 19. 

* Respects. Considerations ; motives. ' Wliatsoever secret respects were likely 
to move them.' — Hooker. 

' I would have doff 'd all other respects.' — Shakespere. 



Essay xi.] • Of Great Place. 95 

lead a man, lie shall never be without ; as Solomon saitli, ' To 
respect persons it is not good, for such a man will transgress for 
a piece of bread.' 

It is most true what was anciently spoken — ' A place showeth 
the man ; and it showeth some to the better, and some to the 
worse.' ' Omnium consensu, capax imperii, nisi imperasset." 
saith Tacitus of Galba ; but of Yespasian he saith, ' Solus im- 
perantium, Vespasianus mutatus in melius'" — ^though the one 
was meant of sufficiency, the other of manners and affection.' 
It is an assured sign of a worthy and generous spirit, whom 
honour amends — for honour is, or should be, the place of virtue 
— and as in nature things move violently to their place, and 
calmly in their place, so virtue in ambition is violent, in au- 
thority settled and calm. All rising to great place is by a 
winding stair ; and if there be factions, it is good to side a 
man's self whilst he is in the rising, and to balance himself 
when he is placed. Use the memory of thy predecessor fairly 
and tenderly ; for if thou dost not, it is a debt will surely be 
paid when thou art gone. If thou have colleagues, respect 
them ; and rather call them when they look not for it, than 
exclude them when they have reason to look to be called. Be 
not too sensible or too remembering of thy place in conversation 
and private answers to suitors ; but let it rather be said, ' When 
he sits in place, he is another man.' 

ANTITHETA ON GREAT PLACE. 
Pko. Contra. 

* ' Diun lionores appetimus, libertatem 

* * * * exuimus. 

' While we are seeking for great 

place, we are stripping mcrselves of 

liberty.' 

' Honores fociunt et virtutes et vitia ' Honores dant fere potestatem earum 

conspicua ; itaque illas provocant, hsec rerum, quas optima conditio est nolle, 

refrsenant. proxima non posse. 

' Great place makes both virtues and ' The things which are placed in a 
vices conspicuous; accordingly it is an man's power by high office, are, for the 



* ' One whom all would have considered fit for rule.' 

' 'Alone of all the emperors, Vespasian was changed for the better.' — Tacit. 
Eist. i. 9, 50. 

' Affection. Disposition ; general state of mind. 
' There grows 
In my most ill composed affection, such 
A stanchless avarice.' — Shakespcre. 



96 Of Great Place. [Essay xi. 

Pro. Contea. 

incentive to the one and restrains the most part, such as it would be the best 

other.' thim/ to leant the Tvish, and the next 

best to watit the power to do.' 
' Non novit quisquam, quantum in 

virtutis cui'sii profeeerit ; nisi honores ei ' Ilonorum ascensus arduus, static 

campum praebeant apertum. ^ lubriea, regressus prreceps. 

' 2i^o one knows how far he has ad- ' T/te ascent to high office is steep, the 

vanced on the road of virtue, unless summit slippery, the descent precipitous.' 
public office affords him a field for 

(lotion ' ' ' Q"^ ^'^ honore sunt, vulgi opinionera 

mutuentur oportet, ut seipsos beatos 
* * * * putent. 

' 27to.se who hold high office must 
'•• borrow the view ivhich the vulgar take 

of them, in order to think themselves 
happy: 



ANNOTATIONS. 

A work entitled The Bishop (by the late Dr. Cooke Taylor, but -without his name), 
contains so many appropriate remarks, that I take the liberty of giving several 
quotations from it. It consists of letters 2:)rofessed to be addressed to a recently- 
appointed Bishop. 

' Power to do good is the true and lawful end of aspiring.'' 

' Two classes of men occupy liigli station ; those wliose time 
has been sj^ent in thinking how it could be attained ; and those 
who have mainly bestowed their attention on the use that should 
be made of it when attained. Were there no world but this, 
the conduct of the latter would justly be reckoned preposterous ; 
they would be regarded as ' seers of visions and dreamers of 
dreams.' When, however, they do by chance find themselves 
preferred, they are not only well disposed but ready qualified 
to use their advantages rightly ; for the art of true obedience is 
the best guide to the art of true command. On the contrary, 
he who has thought only of the means by Avhich he might 
climb, however good his intentions, is generally somewhat 
abroad when he has completed the ascent. He is like those 
whom we frequently meet, that have spent the best part of 
their life in making a fortune, and then do not know what to 
do with it. Eager to get up, they forget to determine the 
nature of the ground on which they stand, and they consider 



Essay xi.] Annotatimis. 97 

not how it is related to that which they desire to attain : when 
they have ascended, their former station is at too great a 
distance to be surveyed accurately, and the reciprocal influences 
cannot be understood, because one side is removed beyond the 
reach of observation.' (Page 329.) 

' After a tiine set hefore thee thine own example.'' 

* There is a strong temptation to sacrifice the consciousness 
of individuality for the sympathy of the multitude. Tlie peril of 
being seduced from our proper orbit is not less great, when we 
seek to join, than when we try to avoid others. There are 
those who are willing to err with Plato, and there are those 
who are unwilling to go right with Epicurus. A cause is not 
necessarily good because some good men have favoured it, nor 
necessarily bad because bad men have supported it ; yet we all 
know that many well-meaning men voted against the abolition 
of the slave-trade, because it was advocated by some partisans 
of the French Kevolution. ....'' 

' It might at first sight appear that the absurdities of party, 
so obvious to every thinking man, would render the adoption of 
a right course a matter of no very great difiiculty ; indeed, an 
aphorism is already provided for our guidance, which apparently 
is as simple and easy as the rule of party itself: ' Steer clear of 
both parties ; hold the middle course.' But simple and sound 
as the maxim may appear, its validity will be greatly weakened 
by a close examination. Both parties are not absolutely wrong; 
each is partially wrong and partially right : to keep always equi- 
distant from both is to keep away from the truths as well as 
from the falsehoods, and to expose yourself to the chance, or 
rather to the certainty, of being influenced by each in turn. 

' It is impossible for a man to realize the fable of Moham- 
med's coffin, and remain for ever balanced between equipollent 
attractions, but he may oscillate like a pendulum between the two 
extremes. In such a case, he will yield to both parties, be 
duped by both, and be despised by all. The truly independent 
course is to act as if party had no existence ; to follow that 
which is wisest and best in itself, irrespective of the side which 
makes the loudest claim to the monopoly of goodness. No 
doubt, such a course will often approach, or rather be ap- 
9 G 



98 Of Great Place. [Essay xi. 

proaclied bj, the orbit of one party at one time, and the other 
at another, just as each of them chances to come the nearer 
to what is really right. Nay more, as each party does possess 
some truth mingled with its falsehoods, it is perfectly possible 
to be identiiied with one of two bigoted and opposed parties on 
some special question, and 4o be similarly identiiied with the 
other party on a diiferent question 

'These coincidences may be called iho. Nodes of the different 
orbits ; and when they occur, the proper movements are most 
subject to disturbing influences. The attraction of party varies 
inversely as the square of the distance ; when you are brought 
near a powerful and organized mass, there is a strong tempta- 
tion to pass over the intervening space. (Page 46-48.) 

' The demand on a great man's liberality is greatly increased 
if he holds himself aloof from party ; for this offence forgiveness 
can only be purchased by a very lavish system of disbursements; 
and after all, he must be prepared to find, that every shilling 

bestowed by party-men is equivalent to his hound 

It is not necessary to dilate on the merits of prudent economy, 
but assuredly nowhere is such a virtue more indispensably 
required than when demands on expenditure are regulated, not 
by realities, but by imaginations. 

' Great as is the evil of having your expenditure of money and 
time measured by the imaginations of persons, who do not trouble 
themselves to investigate realities, the evil is fearfully aggravated 
by the diversity of objects to which each set of imaginings refers. 
Those who surround you seem to act literally on Swift's advice 
to servants, each of whom is recommended to do his best in his 
own particular department, to spend the whole of his master's 
property. Thus it is with your money and time ; every person 
seems to expect that both should be bestowed on his favourite 
project to their extreme amount, and no one is disposed to take 
into account that there are other claims and demands which 
should not be abridged in their fair proportions. There will 
be a combination to entrap you into a practical exemplification 
of ' the sophism of composition ; men will say, you can afford 
this, that, or the other expense : forgetting that all together wiU 
.ruin you.' (Page 84.) 



Essay xi.] Amiotdtions. 99 



^ Reform^ therefore^ ivlthout Iravery or scandal of former times 
wid persons ; hut yet set it doivn to thyself as vjell to create 
good precedents as to follow them.'' 

' To warn a public man (says the author of The Bishoji) of 
ordinary sense, against innovation, is just as idle as to warn him 
against taking physic : he will have recourse to neither one nor 
the other, unless forced by necessity. The thing to be feared 
in both cases is, that he will delay the application of alteratives 
until the disease can only be cured by violent remedies. 
One of the finest mills in our manufacturing districts is also 
one of the oldest ; the machinery in it has always kept abreast 
with the j)rogress of modern invention, but it has never been 
closed a single day for the purpose of renovation or repair. 
I asked its proprietor the explanation of so remarkable a phe- 
nomenon ; he gave it in one sentence, ' I am always altering, 
but never changing.' Men sometimes deal with institutions as 
Sir John Cutler did with his stockings ; they darn them with 
worsted until, from silken, they are changed into woollen, while 
the stupid owners persist in asserting their continual identity. 
The cry of ' innovation' belongs exclusively to the Duncery ; 
but reluctance to change is a feeling shared with them by 
sensible people. 

' Among the many fallacies of the day that pass unquestioned, 
there is none more general nor more fallacious than that inno- 
vation is popular; the truth is, that a judicious innovator is 
likely to be, at least for a time, the most unpopular man in the 
universe : he will be hated by those who are satisfied with old 
evils ; he will be disliked by the timid and the lazy, who dread 
the peril and the trouble of change ; and he will receive little 
favour from those most conscious of the evil, because his re- 
medies will not act as a charm, and remove in an instant the 
accumulated ills of centuries 

' Some persons are not aware of the fact, that in all men the 
love of ease is far superior to the love of change ; in the serious 
concerns of life, novelty is never desired for its own sake ; then, 
habit becomes a second nature, and it is only the positive pres- 
sure of evil that can drive us to alteration. We do find men 
occasionally rash and insatiable in changing ; but this is only 



100 Of Grtat Place. [Essay xi. 

from their being impatient under the sense of real evils, anfl in 
error as to remedies. The violent vicissitudes of the first 
French Revolution were not the result of a mad love of experi- 
ments ; they were produced by the national bankruptcy of 
France, and the starving condition of the people of Pai'is. An 
ignorant man suffering under painful disease will try the pre- 
scription of every mountebank, and without waiting to see how 
one quack medicine operates, will have recourse to another. A 
fevered nation, like a feverish patient, turns from side to side — 
not through love of change, but because, while the disease con- 
tinues, any fixed posture must be painful. The physician who 
superintends his- condition knows that this restlessness and im- 
patience are symptoms of the disease : it would be well if those 
who superintend our political and ecclesiastical state, while 
they justly regard discontents and disturbances as evils in them- 
selves, would also look upon them as certain signs that there is 
something wrong somewhere.' (Page 315-318.) 

' JEmbrace and invite liel/ps and advices touching the execidion of 
thy office.^ 

' The dread of unworthy imputations of undue influence may 
often drive a worthy man into a perilous course. Tlie fear of 
being deemed an imitator is scarcely less dangerous than that 
of being supposed to be led. We frequently see those who re- 
gard the course of a wise and good man with mingled affection 
and veneration, influenced by his example for the worse rather 
than for the better, by indulging their ruling passion for origin- 
ality, and by their abhorrence of being regarded as followers 
and imitators. To avoid coincidences becomes the great labour 
of their lives, and they take every opportunity of ostentatiously 
declaring the originality and independence of their course. Nay, 
they will not only declare their originality, but they will seek 
to make or find opportunities of exhibiting it, though the course 
they adopt in consequence may be contrary to their own secret 
judgment. A man who yields to this weakness, which is far 
more rife than the world generally believes, is the slave of any 
one who chuses to work upon his foible. The only thing 
requisite to make him commit any conceivable folly, is to dare 
him to depart from his friend's counsel or example. Miss 



Essay xi.] Annotations. 101 

Edg^wortli, in her Juvenile Tales^ lias admirably illustrated the 
consequence of yielding to such fears ; Tarlton in vain strove to 
persuade the weak Lovett to break bounds by appeals to his 
courage, but when he hinted that his refusal would be attributed 
to his dependence on the strong-minded Hardy, the poor boy 
sprang over the wall with nervous alacrity. This dread of 
imitation often leads to the neglect of valuable suggestions 
which might be derived from the tactics and example of 
adversaries- 'Fas est et ab hoste doceri,' is a maxim more 
frequently quoted than acted on, and yet its wisdom is con- 
firmed by every day's experience. A casual remark made long 
ago to me by your Lordship contains the rationale of the whole 
matter — ' It is ignorance, and not knowledge, that rejects p^ 
instruction; it is weakness, and not strength, that refuses 
co-operation.' ' (Page 77.) 

'In bestowing office, and in selecting instruments, a man 
anxious to do his duty must take into account both the kind 
and degree of fitness in the candidates. Of the degrees of intel- 
ligence the world is a very incompetent judge, and of the differ- 
ences in hind^ it knows little or nothing. Witli the vulgar 
everything is good, bad, or middling ; and if three persons are 
worthy and intelligent men, you will find that the preference 
you show to any one of them is considered to be the result of 
mere caprice. For instance, you know that the clerical requi- 
sites for an agricultural parish are different from those necessary 
in a manufacturing district, and that both are dissimilar to the 
qualifications for a chaplaincy to a collegiate institution, or for 
a prebendal stall. Your choice will be guided by these con- 
siderations ; but, beyond doubt, jou will find very few wlio can 
appreciate or even understand such motives. . . . Now, 
this want of discriminating power and knowledge in the spec- 
tators of your career, will by no means induce them to suspend 
the exercise of their fallacious judgment: on the contrary, 
opinions will be pronounced most positively by those who are 
most wanting in opportunity to discover, and in capacity to 
estimate, your motives. But the erroneous judgments of others 
must not lead you to be suspicious of your own ; the value of 
the tree will be finally known by its fruits, — it would be folly 
to neglect its training, or to grub it up, because people ignorant 
of the adaptation of soil to growth, tell you that another tree 
9* 



102 Of Great Place. [Essay xi. 

in the same place would be more useful or more ornamental. 
You know both the soil and the plant — the vast majority of 
your censurers will know nothing of the one and marvellously 
little of the other.' (Page 174.) 

' A servant or a favourite^ If he he inward^ and no other apparent 
cause of esteem^ is commonly thought hut a hy-way to close 
corruption. 

^ If the relations you form with your subordinates, particu- 
larly those whose position brings them into frequent and imme- 
diate contact with you, be founded on intellectual sympathies, 
and common views of great principles, efforts will be made to 
sow discord between you, by representing him as the juggler, 
and you as the puppet. In this case calumny disguises its im- 
putation by flattery, and compliments your heart at the expense 
of your head. ' He is,' the malignere will say, ' a very worthy, 
well-meaning man, but he sees only with A. B.'s eyes, and acts 
only on A. B.'s suggestions ; he is a very good and clever man, 
but he thinks by proxy.' 

' If you are a student, — ^if you have acquired any reputation 
for scholarship or literature, — but, above all, if you have ever 
been an author, this imputation will be circulated and credited ; 
for one of the most bitter pieces of revenge which readers take 
on writers, is to receive implicitly the aphorism of the block- 
heads, that studious habits produce an inaptitude for the busi- 
ness of active life. 

' The imputation of being led is not very pleasant, but it may 
very safely be despised ; in the long run men will learn to 
judge of your actions from their nature, and not from their 
supposed origin. But the nature of this calumny deserves to 
be more closely investigated, because there is nothing more 
injurious to public men than the jealousy of subordinate strength 
which it is designed to produce. The cases are, indeed, very 
rare, of an upright, sensible man being led either by a knave or 
a fool ; but there are countless examples of a weak man being 
led by a weaker, or a low-principled man by a downright rogue. 
Now, in most of these cases, it will be found that the subjuga- 
tion arose from trusting to the impossibility of being led by one 
of obviously inferior strength. Cunning is the wisdom of weak- 



Essay xi.] Annotations. 10? 

ness, and those who chuse the weak for their instruments, ex- 
pose themselves to its arts.' (Page 68-YO.) 

^AsforfoGility^ it is worse than h^ery? 

" It is scarcely necessary to dwell on the necessity of caution 
in bestowing confidence ; it is the highest favour in your power 
to confer, and deliberation enliances an act of kindness just as 
much as it aggravates an act of malice. ' Favours which seem 
to be dispensed upon an impulse, with an unthinking facility, 
are received like the liberalities of a spendthrift, and men thank 
God for them.' It is of more importance to observe that even 
a greater degree of caution is necessary in suspending or with- 
drawing confidence; gross indeed should be the treachery, and 
unquestionable the proofs, that would justify such a couree. The 
world generally will blame your original choice ; your discarded 
adherent will be lowered in his own esteem, and consequently 
will thus far have made a sad progress in moral degradation ; 
and your own mind will not escape scatheless ; for greater 
proneness to suspicion will of necessity develope itself in your 
character. Most of all is caution required in restoring confi- 
dence ; constitutional changes are wrought in every moral 
principle during its period of suspended animation ; though 
the falling-out of lovers be proverbially the renewal of love, it 
is questionable whether the suspended confidence of friends is 
ever wholly efliaced in its infiuences. Had Ctesar recovered 
from the stab which Brutus gave him, he might, with his usual 
clemency, have pardoned the crime ; but he would not have 
been the Csesar I take him for, if he did not ever after adopt 
the precaution of wearing armour when he was in company 
with Brutus. Tlie hatred of an enemy is bad enough, but no 
earthly passion equals in its intensity the hatred of a friend.' 
(Page T2.) 

' There are people who believe that the voice of censure 
should never be heard in an interview, and that you have no 
right to rebuke presumption, check interference, or make men 
conscious of their weakness. You are to affect a humility, by 
which you tacitly confess yourself destitute of moral judgment. 
But you must remember that, in interviews connected with your 
official station, you appear for the most part as an adjudicator; 



a04; Of Great Place. [Essay xi. 

an appeal is made to you, as holding the balance of justice, and 
also as a wielder of its sword, ' A righteous humility,' says the 
author of the Statesman, 'will teach a man never to pass a sen- 
tence in a spirit of exultation : a righteous courage will teach 
him never to withhold it from fear of being disliked. Popu- 
larity is commonly obtained by a dereliction of the duties of 
censure, under a pretext of humility.' (Page 256.) 

' There is great danger of praise from men in high place 
being identified with promise, and compliment tortured into 
grounds of hope, — not always hope of promotion, but hope of 
influencing promotion. Your approbation warmly expressed 
will be deemed to have a value beyond the mere expression of 
your opinion, and though you expressly guard against expecta- 
tions, you will nevertheless raise them. A late chancellor, to 
whom more books were sent and dedicated than he could 
possibly read if his life was prolonged to antediluvian duration, 
by the complimentary answers he sent to the authors, gathered 
round him a host of expectants, and produced a mass of suflering 
which would scarcely be credited save by those who were per- 
sonally acquainted with it. Kindness and cordiality of mamier 
are scarcely less pleasing to the feelings than express compli- 
ment, and they are the more safe for both parties, since they 
afford no foundation for building up expectations ; a species of 
architecture sufliciently notorious for the weakness of the foun- 
dations that support an enormous superstructure.' (Page 163.) 

* Seveiity hreedeth fear^ 

' It may be doubted whether it is politic, where a man has 
wholly lost your esteem, and has no chance of regaining it, to 
let him know that his doom is fixed irrevocably. The hope of 
recovering his place in your estimation may be a serviceable 
check on his conduct ; and if he supposes you to be merely 
angry with him (a mistake commonly made by vulgar minds), 
he may hope and try to pacify you by an altered course, trusting 
that in time you will forget all. In such a case you need not 
do or say anything deceitful ; you have only to leave him in his 
error. On the other hand, if he finds that you have no resent- 
ment, but that your feeling is confinned disesteem, and that the 
absence of all anger is the very consequence of such a feeling — 



Essay xi.] Annotations. 105 

for you cannot be angry where you do not mean to trust again 
— he may turn out a miscliievous hater. 

' On the whole, however, the frank, open-hearted coiirse is 
the more politic in the long run. If you use towards all whom 
you really esteem, a language which in time will come to be 
fully understood by all, from its being never used except where 
you really estem, then, and then onl^, you will deserve and 
obtain the full reliance of the worthy. They will feel certain 
that they possess your esteem, and that if they do anything by 
which it may be forfeited, it will be lost for ever. To establish 
such a belief is the best means of preserving the peace and 
purity of your circle, and it is worth while risking some enmity 
to eifect so desirable an object. 

' It must, however, be oljserved that it is equally politic and 
christian-like to avoid breaking with anybody ; while you pur- 
chase no man's forbearance by false hopes of his regaining your 
esteem, you must not drive him into hostility through fear of 
your doing him a mischief: The rule of Spartan warfare is not 
inapplicable to the conduct of a christian statesman ; never give 
way to an assailing enemy, — never pursue a flying foe further 
than is necessary to secure the victory. Let it be always 
understood that it is safe to yield to you, and you will re- 
move the worst element of resistance, despair of pardon.' (Page 
T2-T6.) 

^ Be not too remernbering of thy place in conversation and private 
answers to suitors.^ 

Tliere may, however, be an error on the opposite side. — 
' Men are often called affable and no way proud,' says Dr. Cooke 
Taylor in the work already quoted, ' who really exhibit a vulgar 
sort of pride in taking liberties, and talking to their inferiors 
with a kind of condescending familiarity which is gratifying to 
mean minds, but which to every person of delicacy, is the most 
odious form of insolence. K you wish to be familiar with an 
inferior, let him rather feel that you have raised him to your 
own level than that you have lowered yourself to his. You 
may see the propriety of his aphorism unfortunately manifested 
in books written by clever men for the use of the humble 
classes, and for children. Many of these are rejected as offen- 



106 Of Great Place. [Essay xi. 

sive, because tlie writers deem it necessary to sliow that they 
are going down to a low level of understanding ; their familiarity 
becomes sheer vulgarity, and their affected simplicity is puzzle- 
headed obscurity. The condescension of some great people is 
like the ' letting down' in such authors ; they render themselves 
more ridiculous than Hercules at the court of Omphale, for 
they assume the distatt without discarding the club and lion's 
skin. It is also very unfair ; for those who go to admire the 
spinning, or to be amused at its incongruity, are exposed to 
the danger of getting an awkward knock from the club.' 
(Page 180.) 

' Certainly^ mien in great fortunes are strangers to themselves, and 
while they are in the puzzle of business they have no time to 
tend theh' health either of lody or mind^ 

Tlie following passage from ' The Bishop* bears upon this en- 
grossment in public business : — ' Tliere are two opposite errors 
into which many public men have fallen ; on the one hand, 
allowing family concerns to intermingle with public business, 
on the other, sacrificing to their station all the enjoyments of 
private life. The former interference is rare ; it is so obviously 
a source of perplexity and annoyance, that it soon works its own 
cure ; but the latter ' grows by what it feeds upon.' Unless you 
habitually court the privacy of the domestic circle, you will find 
that you are losing that intimate acquaintance with those who 
compose it which is its chief charm, and the source of all its 
advantage. In your family alone can there be that intercourse 
of heart with heart which falls like refreshing dew on the soul 
when it is withered and ]) arched by the heats of business and 
the intense selfishness which you must hourly meet in public 
life. Unless your affections are sheltered in that sanctuary, 
they cannot long resist the blighting influence of a constant 
repression of their development, and a compulsory substitution 
of calculation in their stead. Domestic privacy is necessary, not 
only to your happiness, but even to your efficiency ; it gives the 
rest necessary to your active powers of judgment and discrimi- 
nation ; it keeps unclosed those well-springs of the heart whose 
flow is necessary to float onwards the determination of the head. 
It is not enough that the mdulgence of these affections should 



Essay xi.] Annotations. 107 

fill up the casual chinks of your time ; they must have their 
allotted portion of it, with which nothing but urgent necessity 
should be allowed to interfere. These things are the aliments 
of his greatness ; they preserve within him that image of moral 
beauty which constant intercourse with the public world — that 
is, the world with its worse side outwards — is too likely to 
efface. ' If our clergy had been permitted to marry,' said au 
intelligent Komanist, ' we never should have had inquisitors.' ' 
(Page 327.) 

' A place shoivetk the man : and it showeth some to the hetter, 
and some to the worse^ ' 

Bacon here quotes a Greek proverb, and a very just one. 
Some persons of great promise, when raised to high office, either 
are pufied up with self-sufficiency, or daunted by the ' high 
winds that blow on high hills,' or in some way or other dis- 
appoint expectation. And others, again, show talents and 
courage, and other qualifications, when these are called forth 
by high office, beyond what any one gave them credit for before, 
and beyond what they suspected to be in themselves. It is 
unhappily very difficult to judge how a man will conduct himself 
in a high office, till the trial has been made. It must not, 
however, be forgotten that renown and commendation will, as 
in other cases, be indiscriminate. By those w^hose nearness, or 
easiness of access, enables them to form an accurate judgment, 
many a public man will \q found neither so detestable nor so 
admirable as perhaps he is thought by opposite parties. This 
truth is well expressed in the fable of ' The Clouds." 

' Two children once, at eventide. 
Thus prattled by their parents' side :— 
' See, mother, see that stormy cloud 1 
What can its inky bosom shroud ? 
It looks so black, I do declare 
I shudder quite to see it there.' 
' And father, father, now behold 
Those others, all of pink and gold ! 
How beautiful and bright their hue ! 
I wish that I were up there too : 



* See Fourth Book of the Lessons for the Use of National Schools, page 49. 



108 Of Great Place. [Essay 

For, if they look so fine from here, 

What must they be wheu one is near !' 

' Children,' the smiling sire replied, 

' I've climbed a mountain's lofty side. 

Where, lifted 'mid the clouds awhile. 

Distance no longer could beguile : 

And closer seen, I needs must say 

That all the clouds are merely grey ; 

Differing in shade from one another. 

But each in colour like his brother. 

Those clouds you see of gold and pink. 

To others look as black as ink ; 

And that same cloud, so black to you. 

To some may wear a golden hue. 

E'en so, my children, they whom fate 

Has planted in a low estate. 

Viewing their rulers from afar, 

Admire what prodigies they are. 

O ! what a tj'i-ant ! dreadful doom ! 

His crimes have wrapped our land in gloom 1 

A tyrant ! nay, a hero this, 

The glorious source of all our bliss ! 

But they who haunt the magic sphere, 

Beholding then its inmates near. 

Know that the men, by some adored. 

By others flouted and abhorred, 

Nor sink so low, nor rise so high, 

As seems it to the vulgar eye. 

The man his party deems a hero. 

His foes, a Judas, or a Nero — 

Patriot of superhuman worth. 

Or vilest wretch that cumbers earth. 

Derives his bright or murky hues 

From distant and from pai-ty views ; 

Seen close, nor black nor gold are they. 

But every one a sober grey.' ' 



ESSAY XII. OF BOLDNESS. 

IT is a trivial grammar-scliool text, but yet worthy a wise 
man's consideration : question was asked of Demosthenes,' 
what was the chief part of an orator ? He answered, action : 
what next ? action : what next again ? action. He said it that 
knew it best, and had by nature himself no advantage in that he 
connnended. A strange tiling, that that part of an orator which 
is but superficial, and rather the virtue of a player, should be 
placed so high above those other noble parts, of invention, elo- 
cution, and the rest ; nay, almost alone, as if it were all in all. 
But the reason is plain. There is in human nature generally 
more of the fool than of the wise ; and therefore those faculties 
by which the foolish part of men's minds is taken, are most 
potent. Wonderful like is the case of boldness in civil busi- 
ness ; what first ? boldness : what second and third ? boldness. 
And yet boldness is a child of ignorance and baseness^ far infe- 
rior to other parts: but, nevertheless, it doth fascinate, and 
bind hand and foot those that are either shallow in judgment or 
weak in courage, which are the greatest part, yea, and prevaileth 
with wise men at weak times ; therefore we see it hath done 
wonders in popular States, but with senates and princes less — 
and more, ever upon the first entrance of bold persons into 
action, than soon after ; for boldness is an ill keeper of promise. 
Surely, as there are mountebanks for the natural body, so there 
are mountebanks for the politic^ Body — men that undertake 
great cures, and perhaps have been lucky in two or three ex- 
periments, but want the grounds of science, and therefore cannot 
hold out, Nay, you shall see a bold fellow many times do 
Mahomet's miracle. Mahomet made the people believe that he 
would call a hill to him, and from the top of it offer up his 
prayers for the observers of his law. The people assembled ; 
Mahomet called the hill to come to him again and again ; 
and when the hill stood still, he was never a whit abashed/ but 



' Plut. Vit Demosth. 17, 18. ' Politic. Political; civU. 

^ Whit. The leant degree ; the smallest particle. ' Not a whit behind the very 
chiefest Apostles.' — 2 Cor. xi. 5. 

10 



110 Of Boldness. [Essay xii. 

said, ' If the hill will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet will go 
to the hill.' So these men, when they have promised great 
matters, and failed most shamefnlly, yet, if they have the per- 
fection of boldness, they w^ill bnt slight it over,' and make a 
tnrn, and no more ado." Certainly, to men of great judgment, 
bold persons are sport to behold — nay, and to the vulgar also 
boldness hath somewhat of the ridiculous : for, if absurdity be 
the subject of laughter, doubt you not that great boldness is 
seldom without some absurdity : especially it is a sport to see 
when a bold fellow is out of countenance, for that puts his face 
into a most shrunken and wooden posture, as needs it must — 
for in bashfulness the spirits do a little go and come — but with 
bold men, upon like occasion, they stand at a stay ;' like a stale 
at chess, where it is no mate, but yet the game cannot stir ; but 
this last were fitter for a satire than for a serious observation. 
This is well to be weighed, that boldness is ever blind, for it 
seeth not dangers and inconveniences : therefore it is ill in 
counsel, good in execution ; so that the right use of bold 
persons is, that they never command in chief, but be seconds, 
and under the direction of others ; for in counsel it is good 
to see dangers, and in execution not to see them, except they be 
very great. 



ANNOTATIONS. 

' Boldness is a child of ignorance and haseness far inferior to 
other parts.'' 

Bacon seems to have had that over-estimate of those who 
ai'e called the ' prudent' which is rather common. One cause 
of the supposed superiority of wisdom often attributed to the 
over-cautious, reserved, non-confiding, non-enterprising cliarac- 



Slight over. To treat carelessly. 

' His death, and your deliverance, 
Were themes that ought not to be slighted over. — Dryden. 
' Ado. ' Mijch ado about nothing.' — ShaJcespere. 
' Stay. Stand; cessation of progression. 

' Never to decay 
Until his revolution was at stay' — Milton, 



di.] Annotations. Ill 

ters, as compared with the more open, free-spoken, active, and 
daring, is. the tendency to over-rate the amount of what is 
distinctly known. The bold and enterprising are likely to 
meet with a greater number of tangihle failures than the over- 
cautious ; and yet if you take a hundred average men of each 
description, you will find that the bold have had, on the whole, 
a more successful career. But the failures — that is, the non- 
success — of the over-cautious, cannot be so distinctly traced. 
Such a man only misses the advantages — often very great — 
which boldness and free-speaking might have gained. He who 
always goes on foot will never meet with a fall from a horse, or 
be stopped on a journey by a restive horse ; but he who rides, 
though exposed to these accidents,*will, in the end, have accom- 
plished more journeys than the other. He who lets his land 
lie fallow, will have incurred no losses from bad harvests ; biit 
lie will not have made so much of his land as if he had ven- 
tured to encounter such risks. 

The kind of boldness which is most to be deprecated — or at 
least as much so as the boldness of ignorance — is daring, un- 
accompanied by firmness and steadiness of endurance. Such 
was that which Tacitus attributes to the Gauls and Britons: 
' Eadem in deposcendis periculis audacia ; eadem in detrectandis, 
"ubi advenerint, formido." This character seems to belong to 
those who have — in phrenological language — Ho^e^ and Comr 
hativeness, large, and Firmness small. 



* The same daring in rushing into dangers, and the same timidity in shrinking 
from them when they come. 



ESSAY XIII. OF GOODNESS, AND GOODNESS 
OF NATURE. 

I TAKE goodness in this sense, — the affecting' of the weal 
of men, which is that the Grecian, call Philanthropia ; 
and the word humanity, as it is used, is a little too light to 
express it. Goodness, I call the habit, and goodness of nature 
the inclination. This, of all virtues and dignities of the mind, 
is the greatest, being the character of the Diety ; and without 
it, man is a busy, mischievous, wretched thing, no better than 
a kind of vermin. GoodnesS answers to the theological virtue, 
Charity, and admits no excess but error. The desire of power 
in excess caused the angels to fall — the desire of knowledge in 
excess caused Man to fall; but in charity there is no excess, 
neither can angel or Man come in danger by it. Tlie inclina- 
tion to goodness is imprinted deeply in the nature of Man; 
insomuch, that if it issue not towards men, it will take unto 
other living creatures ; as it is seen in the Turks, a cruel people, 
who, nevertheless, are kind to beasts, give alms to dogs and 
birds ; insomuch as Busbechius^ reporteth a christian boy in 
Constantinople had liked to have been stoned for gagging in a 
waggishness, a long-billed fowl. Errors, indeed, in this virtue, 
in goodness or charity, may be committed. The Italians have of 
it an ungracious proverb, 'Tanto buon die val niente," and one 
of the doctors of Italy, Nicholas Machiavel, had the confidence to 
put in writing, almost in plain terms, 'That the christian faith 
had given up good men in prey to those who are tyrannical and 
unjust:' which he spake, because, indeed, there was never law, 
or sect, or opinion, did so much magnify goodness as the 
christian religion doth ; therefore, to avoid the scandal and the 
danger both, it is good to take knowledge' of the errors of a 
habit so excellent. Seek the good of other man, but be not in 



' Affecting. The being desirous of; aiming at. See page 1. 

' Busbechiua A learned Fleming of the 16tli century, in his Travels in the 
East. 

' ' So good that he is good for nothing.' 

* Take knowledge of. Take cognizance of. ' They took knowledge of them, that 
they had been with Jesus.' — Acts iv. 13. 



Essay xiii.] Of GoodnesSyand Goodness of Nature. 113 

bondage to tlieir faces or fancies ; for that is but facility or 
softness, wliicli taketli an honest mind prisoner. ISTeitlier give 
tliou ^sop's cock a gem, who would be better pleased and 
happier if he had a barlej-corn. The example of God teacheth 
the lesson truly : ' He sendeth his rain, and maketh his sun to 
shine upon the just and the unjust ;' but he doth not rain wealth 
nor shine honour and virtues upon men equally : common benefits 
are to be communicated with all, but peculiar benefits with 
choice. And beware how in making the portraiture thou 
breakest the pattern ; for divinity maketh the love of ourselves 
the pattern — the love of our neighbours but the portraiture : 
'Sell all thou hast, and give it to the poor, and follow me;' but 
sell not all thou hast, except thou come and follow me — that is, 
except thou have a vocation' wherein thou mayest do as much 
good with little means as with great — ^tbr otherwise, in feeding 
the streams thou driest the fountain. 

IsTeither is there only a habit of goodness directed by right 
reason ; but there is in some men, even in nature, a disposi- 
tion towards it, as, on the other side, there is a natural 
malignity; for there be that in their nature do not aflfect 
the good of others. The lighter sort of malignity turneth 
but to a crossness, or frowardness, or aptness to oppose, or 
difiicileness,' or the like ; but the deeper sort to envy, and 
mere mischief. Such men, in other men's calamities, are, as 
it were, in season, and are ever on the loading' part — not 
so good as the dogs that hcked Lazarus' sores, but like flies 
that are still buzzing upon anything that is raw — misanthropi 
[men-haters], that make it their practice to bring men to the 
bough, and yet never have a tree for the purpose in their 
gardens, as Timon' had : such dispositions are the very errors of 
human nature, and yet they are the fittest timber to make great 
politics' of— like to knee-timber," that is good for ships that are 
ordained to be tossed, but not for building houses that shall 
stand firm. 

* Vocation. See page 20. 

" Diffieileness. Difficulty to he pers^mded. ' The Cardinal, finding the Pope 
difficile in granting the dispensation.' — Bacon, Henry VII. 
' Loading. Loaden ; burdened. 

* See an account of Timon in Plutarch's Life of Marc Antony. 
' Politics. Politicians. See page 21. 

* Knee-timber. A timber cut in the shape of the knee wlien bent. 

10* H 



114 Of Goochuss, and Goodness of Nature. [Essay xiii. 

The parts and signs of goodness are many, K a man be 
gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of 
the workl, and that his heart is no island cut off from other 
lands, but a continent that joins to them, — if he be compas- 
sionate towards the aiflictions of others, it shows that his heai-t 
is like the noble tree that is wounded itself when it gives the 
balm, — if he easily pardons and remits offences, it shows that 
his mind is planted above injuries, so that he cannot be shot, 
— if he be thankful for small benefits, it shows that he weighs 
men's minds, and not their trash ; but, above all, if he have St. 
Paul's perfection, that he would wish to be an anathema from 
Christ,' for the salvation of his brethren, it shows much of a 
divine natm-e, and a kind of conformity with Christ himself. 



ANNOTATIONS. 

' Goodness admits iw excess^ hut error.'' 

Bacon is speaking of what is now called benevolence and 
beneficence ; and his remark is very just, that it admits of no 
excess in quantity, though it maybe misdirected and erroneous. 
For if your liberality be such as to reduce your family to 
poverty, or — like the killing of the hen that laid the golden 
eggs — such as to put it out of your power hereafter to be 
liberal at all ; or if it be bestowed on the undeserving ; this is 
rather to be accomited an unwise and misdirected benevolence 
than an excess of it in quantity. And we have here a remark- 
able instance of the necessity of keeping the whole character 
and conduct, even our most amiable propensities, under the 
control of right principle guided by reason ; and of taking pains 
to understand the subject relating to each duty you are called 
on to perform. For there is perhaps no one quality that can 
produce a greater amomit of miscliief than may be done by 
thoughtless good-nature. For instance, if any one out of 
tenderness of heart and reluctance to punish or to discard the 
criminal and worthless, lets loose on society, or advances to 
important offices, michievous characters, he will have conferred 



* Romans is. 



xiii.] Annotations. 115 

a doubtful benefit on a few, and done incalculable hurt to 
thousands. So also, to take one of the commonest and most 
obvious cases, that of charity to the poor, — a man of great 
wealth, by freely relieving all idle vagabonds, might go far 
towards ruining the industry, and the morality, and the pros- 
perity, of a whole nation. ' For there can be no doubt that 
careless, indiscriminate alms-giving does far more harm than 
good ; since it encourages idleness and improvidence, and also 
imposture. If you give freely to ragged and filthy street 
beggars, you are in fact hiring people to dress themselves in 
filthy rags, and go about begging with fictitious tales of distress. 
If, on the contrary, you carefully inquire for, and relieve, 
honest and industrious pei-sons who have fallen into distress 
through unavoidable misfortune, you are not only doing good to 
those objects, but also holding out an encouragement generally 
to honest industry. 

'You may, however, meet with pei*sons who say, 'as long 
as it is my intention to relieve real distress, my charity is 
equally virtuous, though the tale told me may be a false one. 
The impostor alone is to be blamed who told it me ; I acted ou 
what he said ; and if that is untrue, the fault is his, and not 
mine.' 

' N'ow this is a fair plea, if any one is deceived after making 
careful inquiry : but if he has not taken the trouble to do this, 
regarding it as no concern of his, you might ask him how he 
would act and judge in a case where he is thoroughly in earnest 
- — that is, where his own interest is concerned. Suppose he 
employed a steward or other agent, to buy for him a house, or 
a horse, or any other article, and this agent paid an exorbitant 
price for what was really worth little oi* nothing, giving just 
the same kind of excuse for allowing his employer to be thus 
cheated ; saying, ' I made no careful inquiries, but tooh the 
seller'' s word ; and his being a liar and a cheat, is his fault, and 
not mine ;' the employer would doubtless reply, ' Tlie seller 
indeed is to be condemned for cheating ; but so are you, for 
your carelessness of my interests. His being greatly in fault 
does not clear you ,• and your merely intending to do what was 
right, is no excuse for your not taking pains to gain right in- 
formation.' 

' Now on such a principle we ought to act in our charities : 



116 Of Goodness^ and Goodness of Ifature. [Essay xiii. 

regarding ourselves as stewards of all that Providence lias 
bestowed, and as bound to expend it in the best way possible, 
and not shelter our own faulty negligence under the misconduct 
of another." 

It is now generally acknowledged that relief afforded to want, 
as mere want, tends to increase that want; while the relief 
afforded to the sick, the infirm, and the disabled, has plainly no 
tendency to multiply its own objects. K^ow it is remarkable, 
that the Lord Jesus employed his miraculous power in healing 
the sick continually, but in feeding the hungry only twice ; while 
the power of multiplying food which he then manifested, as 
well as his directing the disciples to take care and gather up 
the fragments that remained that nothing might be lost, served . 
to mark that tlie abstaining from any like procedure on other 
occasions Avas deliberate design. In this, besides other objects, 
our Lord had probably in view to afford us some instruction, 
from his example, as to the mode of our charity. Certain it is, 
that the reasons lor this distinction are now, and ever must be, 
the same as at that time. Now to those engaged in that im- 
poi'tant and inexhaustible subject of inquiry, the internal evi- 
dences of Christianity, it will be interesting to observe here, one 
of the instances in which.the super-human wisdom of Jesus fore- 
stalled the discovery of an important principle, often overlooked, 
not only by the generality of men, but by the most experienced 
statesmen and the ablest philosophers, even in these later ages of 
extended human knowledge, and development of mental power. 

' It is good to take hnowledge of the errors of a habit so 
excellent^ 
As there are errors in its direction, so there are mistakes 
concerning its nature. Tor instance, some persons have a cer- 
tain nervous horror at the sight of bodily pain, or death, or 
blood, which they and others mistake for benevolence ; which 
may or may not accompany it. Phrenologists have been derided 
for attributing large destructi'veness (which, however, is not 
inconsistent with large benevolence, though more prominently 
remarkable when not so combined) to a person who had never 
killed anything but a flea, or to one who could not bear to 



* See Introdiiclory Lessons on Morals, Lesson xvi. p. 139. 



Essay xiii.] Annotations. 117 

crush a wasp or fly that was keeping him awake all night ; as 
if tliej had meant ' the organ of killing,' And yet such a person 
would, according to their own accounts of their own system, 
bear out tlieir sentence, if he was harsh in admonishing or 
rebuking, bitter in resentment, trampling without pity on the 
feelings and the claims of othere, &c. 

"We should not confound together phj^sical delicacy of nerves, 
and extreme tenderness of heart and benevolence and gentle- 
ness of character. It is also important to guard against mis- 
taking for ^ood nature^ what is properly good humour — a cheer- 
ful flow of spirits, and easy temper not readily annoyed, which 
is compatible with great selfishness. 

It is curious to observe how people who are always thinking 
of their own pleasure or interest, will often, if possessing con- 
siderable ability, make others give way to them, and obtain 
everything they seek, excej>t happlne^. For, like a spoiled 
child, who at length cries for the moon, they are always dissa- 
tisfied. And the benevolent, who are always thinking of others, 
and sacrificing their own personal gratifications, are usuiilly the 
happiest of mankind. 

* The Turhg, a ei^uel people^ dre nevertheless Mtid to heasts.'' 

Bacon here slightly hints at a truth most important to be 
kept in mind, that a considerable endowment of natural bene- 
volence is not incompatible with cruelty; and that, consequently, 
we must neither infer absence of all benevolence from such 
conduct as would be called ferocious, or ' ill-natured,' nor again 
calculate, from the existence of a certain amount of good nature, 
on a man's never doing anything crueL 

When Thurteli, the murderer, was executed, there w^as a 
shout of derision raised against the phrenologists for saying that 
his organ of henevolence was large. But they replied, that 
there was also large destruetiveness^ and a moral deficiency, 
which would account for a man goaded to rage (by having been 
cheated of almost all he had by the man he killed) committing 
that act. It is a remarkable confirmation of their view, that a 
gentleman who visited the prison where Tliurtell was confined 
(shortly after the execution) found the jailoi-s, &c., full of pity 
and affection for him. They said he was a kind, good-hearted 



118 Of Goodness^ and Goodness of Nature. [Essay xiiL 

fellow, so obliging and friendly, that they had never had a pri- 
soner whom they so much regretted. And such seems to have 
been his general character, when not influenced at once by the 
desire of revenge and of gain. 

Again, there shall be, perhaps, a man of considerable bene- 
volence, but so fond of a joke that he will not be restrained by 
any tenderness for the feelings of others — 

' Dum modo risum 
' Excutiat sibi non hie cuiquam parcit amico.'* 

And he may be, perhaps, also so' sensitive himself as to be 
enraged at any censure or ridicule directed against himself; and. 
also so envious as to be very spiteful against those whom he 
finds in any way advanced beyond him. Yet this same man 
may, perhaps, be very kind to his friends and his poor neigh- 
bours, as long as they ai"e not rivals and do not at all affront 
him, nor afford any food for his insatiable love of ridicule. 

A benevolent disposition is, no doubt, a great help towards a 
course of uniform practical benevolence ; but let no one trust to 
it, when there are other strong propensities, and no firm good 
principle. 

' So be can but bave bis joke, be will spai-e no friend. 



ESSAY XIV. OF NOBILITY. 

WE will speak of nobility first as a iDortion of an estate,' 
then as a condition of particular persons. A monarchy 
where there is no nobility at all, is ever a pure and absolute 
tyrannj^, as that of the Turks ; for nobility attempers sovereignty, 
and draws the eyes of the people somewhat aside from the line 
royal ; but for democracies, they need it not, and they are com- 
monly more quiet, and less subject to sedition than where there 
are stirps'^ of nobles — for men's eyes are upon the business, and 
not upon the persons ; or, if upon the pei'sons, it is for the 
business' sake, as fittest, and not for flags and pedigree. We 
see the Switzers last well, notwithstanding their diversity of 
religion and of cantons; for utility is their bond, and not 
respects.^ The United Provinces of the Low Countries in their 
government excel ; for where there is an equality, the consulta- 
tions are more indiiferent,^ and the payments and tributes more 
cheerful. A great and potent nobility addeth majesty to a 
monarch, but diminisheth power ; and putteth life and spirit 
into the people, but presseth their fortune. It is well when 
nobles are not too great for sovereignty, nor for justice ; and 
yet maintained in that height, as the insolency* of inferiors may 
be broken upon them before it come on too fast upon the 
majesty of kings. A numerous nobility causeth poverty and 
inconvenience in a State, for it is a surcharge of expense : and 
besides, it being of necessity that many of the nobility fall in 
time to be weak in fortune, it maketh a kind of disproportion 
between honour and means. 

As for nobility in particular persons, it is a reverend thing 
to see an ancient castle or building not in decay, or to see a 
fair timber tree sound and perfect ; how much more to behold 
an ancient noble family, which hath stood against the waves 



' Estate. State ; a political body ; a co^nmonwealth. 

' The estate is green and yet ungoverned.' — Shakespere. 
' Stirps. Eace ; family. ' Sundry nations got footing on that land, of the 
which there yet remain divers great families and stirps.' — Spenser. 
^ Respects. Personal considerations. See page 94. 

* Indifferent. Impartial. See page 65. 

* Insolency. Insolence. ' The insole7icies of traitors, and the violences of rebels.' 
— Bishop Taylor. 



120 



Of Mobility. 



[Essay xiv. 



and weathers of time ! for new nobility is but the act of power, 
but ancient nobility is tlie act of time. Those that are first 
raised to nobility, are commonly more virtuous, but less inno- 
cent, than their descendants — for there is rarely any rising but 
by a commixture of good and evil arts, — ^but it is reason' the 
memory of their virtues remain to their posterity, and their 
faults die with themselves. Nobility of birth commonly abateth 
industry ; and he that is not industrious, envieth him that is : 
besides, noble persons cannot go much higher; and he that 
standeth at a stay'' when others rise, can hardly avoid motions* 
of envy. On the other side, nobility extinguisheth the passive 
envy from others towards them, because they are in possession 
of honour. Certainly, kings that have able men of their nobility, 
shall find ease in employing them, and a better slide into their 
business ; for people naturally bend to them as born in some 
sort to command. 

ANTITHETA ON NOBILITY. 



Pro. 

* * * « 

' Nobilitas laurea, qua tempus homines 
coi'onat. 

' High birth is the wreath with which 
men are crowned by time.' 

' Antiquitatem etiam in monumenlis 
venei-amur : quanto magis in vivis t 

' We reverence antiquity even in life- 
lens monuments ; hojo much more in liv- 
ing ones. 

* » * * 

' Nobilitas virtutem invidise subducit, 
gratise tradit. 

' Nobility withdraws virtue from eiivy, 
and commends it to favour.' 



Contra. 

'Raro ex virtute nobilitas: rarius ex 
Debilitate virtus. 

'Nobility has seldom sprung from 
virtue: virtue still more rarely from 
itobilify.' 

'Nobiles majorum deprecatione, ad 
veniam, ssepias utuntur, quam suffraga- 
tione, ad honores. 

' Pcrsms of high birth oftener resort 
to their ancestors as a means of escaping 
punishment than as a recommendation to 
high posts.' 

'Tanta solet esse industria hominum 
novorum, ut nobiles prte illis tanquam 
stature videantur. 

'Such is the activity of upstarts that 
men of high birth seem, statues in com- 
parison.' 

'Nobiles in stadio respeetant Dimis 
sjepe ; quod mali cuvsoris est. 

' In running their race, men of birth 
look back too often, which is tlie mark 
of a bad i-unner.' 



'Reason. Reasonable; right. See page 92. 
* Stay. Check ; cessation of progress. See page 110. 
^Motions. Internal action ; feelings ; impulses. 
were by the law.' — Romans vii. 5. 



The motions of sin, -whicli 



Essay xiv.] Annotations. 121 

ANNOTATIONS. 

' We will sjpedk of nobility first as a portion of an estate.^ 

In reference to nobility as an institntion, it is important to 
remark how great a difterence it makes whether the Order of 
nobles shall inclnde — as in Germany and most other conntries 
— all the descendants of noble families, or, as in onrs, only the 
eldest; the rest sinking down into commoners. The former 
system is very bad, dividing society into distinct castes, almost 
like those of the Ilindns. Oivr system, through the numerous 
younger branches of noble families, shades off^ as it were, the 
distinction betAveen noble and not-noble, and keeps up the con- 
tinuity of the whole frame. 

^ As for nohility in jKtrticular persons.'' 

In reference to nobility in individuals, nothing was evejr 
better said than by Bishop Warburton — as is reported — in tlip 
House of Lords, on the occasion of some angry dispute which 
had arisen, between a peer of noble family and one of a new 
creation. He said that, 'high birth was a thing which he never 
knew any one disparage, except those who had it not ; and he 
never knew any one make a boast of it who had anything else to 
be proud of.' This is worthy of a place among Bacon's 'Pros 
and Cans,^ though standing half-way between the two : ' USTobi- 
litatem nemo contemnit, nisi qui abest ; nemo jactitat, nisi cui 
nihil aliud est quo glorietur.' 

It is a remarkable circumstance that nohle birth is regarded 
very much according to the etymology of the word, from 
'nosco:' for, a man's descent from any one who was much 
hnown, is much more thought of than the moral worth of his 
ancestors. And it is curious that a person of so exceptionable 
a character, that no one would like to have had him for a father, 
may confer a kind of dignity on his great-great-great-grand 
children. An instance has been known of persons, who were 
the descendants of a celebrated and prominent character in the 
11 



122 Of NoUlity. [Essav xiv. 

Civil War, and who was one of the Eegicides, being themselves 
zealous royalists, and professing to be ashamed of their ancestor. 
And it is likely that if he were now living, they would renounce 
all intercourse with him. Yet it may be doubted whether they 
would not feel mortified if any one should prove to them that 
they had been under a mistake, and that they were in reality 
descended from another j^erson, a resjDcctable but obscure indi- 
vidual, not at all akin to the celebrated regicide. 

It w^as a remark by a celebrated man, himself a gentleman 
born, but with nothing of nobility, that the difference between 
a man with a long line of noble ancestors, and an upstart, is 
that ' the one knows for certain, what the other only conjectures 
as highly probable, that several of his forefathers deserved 
hanging,' Yet it is certain, though strange, that generally 
speaking, the supposed upstart would rather have this very 
thing a certainty — provided there were some great and cele- 
brated exploit in question — than left to conjecture. If lie 
were to discover that he could trace up his descent distinctly 
to a man, who had deserved hanging, for robbing — not a tra- 
veller of his purse, but a king of liis empire, or a neighbouring 
§tate of a province, — he would be likely to make no secret of it, 
and even to be better pleased, inwardly, than if he had made 
out a long line of ancestors who had been very honest farmers. 

Tlie happiest lot for a man, as far as birth is concerned, is 
that it should be such as to give him hut little occasion ever to 
think much about itj which will be the case, if it be neither too 
high nor too low for his existing situation. Those who have 
sunk much below, or risen much above, what suits their birth, 
are apt to be uneasy, and consequently touchy. The one feels 
ashamed of his situation ; the other of his ancestors and other 
relatives. A nobleman's or gentleman's son, or grandson, feels 
degraded by waiting at table, or behind a counter; and a 
member of a liberal profession is apt to be ashamed of his 
father's having done so ; and both are apt to take oflence readily, 
unless they are of a truly magnanimous character. It was 
remarked by a celebrated person, a man of a gentleman's family, 
and himself a gentleman by station, 'I have often thouglit that 
if I had risen like A. B., from the very lowest of the people, 
by my own honourable exertions, I should have rather felt 
proud of so great a feat, than like him, sore and touchy ; but I 



Essay xiv.] Annotations. 123 

suppose I must be mistaken ; for I observe that the far greater 
part of those who are so circumstanced, have just the opposite 
feeling.' 

Tlie characters, however, of true inward nobihty are ashamed 
of nothing but base conduct, and are not ready to take oifence 
at supposed aifronts ; because they keep clear of whatevei' 
deserves contempt, and consider what is undeserved as beneath 
their notice. 



ESSAY XV. OF SEDITIONS AND TROUBLES. 

OIIEFHERDS of people had need know the calendars of 
^ tempests in State, which are commonly greatest when things 
grow to equality, as natural tempests about the equinoctia ;' and 
as there are certain hollow blasts of wind and secret swellings 
of seas before a tempest, so are there in States : — 

' Ille etiam csecos instare tumultus 



Saepe moiiet, fraudesque et opei-ta tumescere bella,'^ 

Libels and licentious discourses against the State, when they 
are frequent and open ; and in like sort, false news often running 
up and down to the disadvantage of the State, and hastily em- 
braced, are amongst the signs of troubles. Virgil, giving the 
pedigree of fame, saith, she was sister to the giants : — 

' Illam terra parens, ira irritata deorum, 
Exti-emam (ut perhibent) Coco Euceladoqiie sororem 
Progenuit.'^ 

As if fames* were the relics of seditions past ; but they are no 
less indeed the preludes of seditions to come. Howsoever, he 
noted it right, that seditious tumults and seditious fames differ 
no more but as brother and sister, masculine and feminine — 
especially if it come to that, that the 'best actions of a State, 
and the most plausible^ and which ought to give greatest 
contentment, are taken in ill sense, and traduced ; for that 
shows the envy great, as Tacitus saith, ' Conflata magna invidia, 
seu bene, sen male, gesta premunt." Neither doth it follow, 
that because these fames are a sign of troubles, that the sup- 
pressing of them Math too much severity should be a remedy 
of troubles; for the despising of them many times checks 



* Equinoctia. Eqtdnoxes. 

^ ' He often warns of dark fast-coming tumults, hidden fraud, and open warfare, 
swelling proud.' — Virgil, Gecn-g. i. 465. 
^ Virg. En. iv. 1*79. 

' Enraged against the Gods, revengeful Earth 
Produced her, last of the Tltanian birth.' — Dryden. 

* Fames. Reports ; mmours. ' The fame thereof was heard in Pharaoh's house, 
saying, Joseph's brethren are come.' — Genesis xlv. 16. 

* Plausible. Laudable; deserving of applause. See page 84. 

* ' Great envy being excited, they condemn acts, whether good or bad.' (Quoted 
probably from memory,) — Tac. Hist. L T. 



Essay xv.] Of Seditions and Troidtlcs. 125 

tliem best, and tlie going about to stop them clotli but make a 
wonder long-lived.' Also that kind of obedience, which Tacitus 
speaketh of, is to be held suspected : ' Errant in officio, sed 
tamen qui mallent mandata imperantium interpretari, quam 
exequi ;" disputing, excusing, cavilling upon mandates and 
directions, is a kind of shaking oif the yoke, and'assay^ of dis- 
obedience : especially if in those disputings they which are for 
the direction speak fearfully and tenderly, and those that are 
against it, audaciously. 

Also, as Machiavel noteth well, when princes, that ought to 
be common^ parents, make themselves as a party, and lean to a 
side, that is, as a boat that is overthrown by uneven weight on 
the one side — as was well seen in the time of Henry III, of 
France ; for, first himself entered league for the extirpation of 
the Protestants, and presently after the same league was turned 
upon himself; for when the authority of princes is made but an 
accessory to a cause, and that there be other bands that tie 
faster than the band of sovereignty, kings begin to be put 
almost out of possession. 

Also, when discords, and quarrels, and factions, are carried 
openly and audaciously ; it is a sign the reverence of govern- 
ment is lost; for the motions of the greatest persons in a 
government ought to be as the motions of the planets under 
primum mobile^ (according to the old opinion,) which is, that 
every of them° is carried swiftly by the highest motion, and 
softly in their own motion ; and, therefore, when great ones in 
their own particular motion move violently, and, as Tacitus ex- 
presseth it well, ' Liberius quam ut imperantium meminissent" 



* There is a law in our Statute Book against ' Slanderous Reports and Tales to 
cause Discord between King and People.' — ^Anno 5 Edward I., Westminster 
Primer, c. xxxi. 

" They were in attendance on their duties, yet preferred putting their own con- 
struction on the commands of their rulers to executing them.' — Tacit. Hist. i. 39. 
' Assay. The first attempt, or taste, by way of trial. 

' For well he weened that so glorious bait 
Would tempt his guest to make thereof assay.' — Spenser. 

* Common. Serving for all. ' Tlie Book of Cwnwow Prayer. 

^ Primum mobile, in the astronomical language of Bacon's time, meant a body 
drawing all others into its own sphere. 

' Every of them. Eaeh of them ; every one of them. ' And it came to pass in 
every of them.' — Apocrypha, 2 Esdras iii. 10. 

'' 'More freely than is consistent with remembering the rulers.' 
11* 



126 Of Seditions and TrouUes. [Essay xv. 

— ^it is a sign the orbs are out of frame ; for reverence is that 
wherewith princes are girt from God, who threateneth the dis- 
solving thereof; ' Solvam cingula regum." 

So when any of the four pillars of government are mainly 
shaken, or weakened (which are religion, justice, counsel, and 
treasm'e,) men had need to pray for fair Aveather. But let us 
pass from this part of predictions (concerning which, neverthe- 
less, more light may be taken from that which followeth,) and 
let us speak first of the materials of seditions, then of the 
motives of them, and thirdly of the remedies. 

Concerning the materials of seditions, it is a thing well to be 
considered — for the sm*est way to prevent seditions (if the times 
do bear it,) is to take away the matter of them ; for if there 
be fuel prepared, it is hard to tell whence the spark shall come 
that shall set it on fire. Tlie matter of seditions is of two kinds, 
much poverty, and much discontentment. It is certain, so 
many overthrown estates, so many votes for troubles. Lucan 
noteth well the state of Kome before the civil war : — 

' Hinc usura vorax, rapidumque in tempore fcenus, 
Hinc concussa fides, et multis utile bellum.'^ 

This same 'multis utile bellum,' is an assured and infallible 
sign of a State disposed to seditions and troubles ; and if this 
poverty and broken estate' in the better sort be joined with a 
want and necessity in the mean people, the danger is imminent 
and great — for the rebellions of the belly are the worst. As 
for discontentments, they are in the politic body like to humours 
in the natural, which are apt to gather a preternatural heat, and 
to inflame ; and let no prince measure the danger of them by 
this, whether they be just or unjust — for that were to imagine 
people to be too reasonable,- who do often spurn at their own 
good, — nor yet by this, whether the griefs* whereupon they rise 
be in fact great or small ; for they are the most dangerous dis- 
contentments, where the fear is greater than the feeling : 



' ' I will loose the bond of kings.' — Joh xii. 18. 

"^ ' Hence usury voracious, and eager for the time of interest ; hence broken 
faith, and war become useful to many.' — Lucan, Phars. i. 181. 

^ Estate. Condition ; circumstances. ' All who are any ways afflicted or dis- 
tressed in mind, body, or estate.' — English Liturgy {Prayer for all Conditions of 
Men.) 

* Griefs. Grievances. 

' The king hath sent to know the nature of your griefs.' — Shakcspere. 



Essay xv.] Of Seditions and Troubles. 127 

' Dolendi modus, timendi non item" — besides, in gi-eat oppres- 
sions, the same things that provoke the patience do withal 
mate'' the courage ; but in fears it is not so — ^neither let any 
prince or State, be secure concerning discontentments, because 
they have been often, or have been long, and yet no peril hath 
ensued — for as it is true that every vapour or fuvne' doth not 
turn into a storm, so it is nevertheless true, that storms, though 
they blow over divers times, yet may fall at last ; and, as the 
Spanish proverb noteth well, ' The cord breaketh at the last by 
ithe weakest pull,' 

The causes and motives of seditions are, innovations in reli- 
gion, taxes, alteration of laws and customs, breaking of privi- 
leges, general oppression, advancement of unworthy persons, 
strangers, deaths, disbanded soldiers, factions grown desperate ; 
and whatsoever in offending people joineth and knitteth them 
in a common cause. 

For the remedies, there may be some general preservatives, 
whereof we will speak : as for the just cure, it must answer to 
the particular disease, and so be left to counsel rather than rule. 

The first remedy or prevention, is to remove, by all means 
possible, that material cause of sedition whereof we speak, which 
is, want and poverty in the estate ;* to which purpose serveth 
the opening and well-balancing of trade ; the cherishing of 
manufactures ; the banishing of idleness ; the repressing of 
waste and excess by sumptuary laws ; the improvement and 
husbanding of the soil ; the regulating of prices of things ven- 
dible ; the moderating of taxes and tributes ; and the like. 
Generally, it is to be foreseen that the population of a kingdom 
(especially if it be not mown down by wars), do not exceed the 
stock of the kingdom which should maintain them : neither is 
the population to be reckoned only by number, for a smaller 
nmnber, that spend more and earn less, do w^ear out an estate 
sooner than a greater number that live low and gather more : 
therefore the multiplying of nobility, and other degrees of 
quality,* in an over-proportion to the common people, do'h 

' There is a limit to the suffering, but none to the apprehension. 
" Mate. To subdue; to quell. See page 15. 
' Fume. An exhalation. 

'That memory, the warden of the brain, shall be a fume.' — Shakespere. 

* Estate. State. See page 119. 

* Quality. Persons of superior rank. ' I will appear at the masquerade dressed 



128 Of Seditions and Troubles. [Essay xv. 

speedily bring a State to necessity ; and so dott likewise an 
overgrown clergy, for tliey bring nothing to the stock ; and in 
like manner, when more are bred scholars than preferments can 
take off. 

It is likewise to be remembered, that, forasmuch as the in- 
crease of any estate must be upon the foreigner (for whatsoever 
is somewhere gotten, is somewhere lost), there be but three 
things which one nation selleth unto another — the commodity 
as nature yieldeth it, the manufacture, and the vecture, or car- 
riage : so that, if these three wheels go, wealth will flow as in 
a spring tide. And it cometh many times to pass, that ' mate- 
riam superabit opus' — that ' the work and carriage is w^orth 
more than the material,' and enricheth a State more ; as is 
notably seen in the Low Countrymen, who have the best mines 
above ground in the world. 

Above all things, good policy is to be used, that the treasures 
and monies in a state be not gathered into few hands, for 
otherwise, a State may have a great stock, and yet starve ; and 
money is like muck, not good except it be spread. This is done 
chiefly by suppressing, or, at the least, keeping a strait hand 
upon the devouring trades of usury, engrossing' great pasturages 
and the like. 

For removing discontentments, or, at least, the danger of 
them, there is in every State (as we know), two portions of 
subjects, the nobles and the commonalty. "When one of these 
is discontent, the danger is not great; for common people are 
of slow motion, if they be not excited by the greater sort ; and 
the greater sort are of small strength, except the multitude be 
apt and ready to move of themselves : then is the danger, when 
the greater sort do but wait for tlie troubling of the waters 



in my feather, that the quality may see how pretty they will look in their travel- 
ling habits.' — Addison. 

The common people still speak of the upper classes as ' the qualitj/.' It is to be 
observed that almost all our titles of respect are tei-ms denoting qualities. ' Her 
Majesty,' ' his Highness,' ' his Excellency,' ' his Gi-ace,' ' the Most Noble', ' the 
Honourable,' ' his Honour,' ' his Worship.' 

* Engrossing. Forestalling. ' Engrossing was also described to be the getting 
into one's possession, or buying up large quantities of any kind of victuals, with 
intent to sell them again.' — Blachstone. 

' Wliat should ye do, then, should ye suppress all this flowery crop of knowledge, 
and new light sprung up ? Should ye set an oligarchy of twenty engrossers over 
it, to bring a famine upon om- minds T — Milton. 



Essay xv.] Of Seditions and Troubles. 129 

amongst the meaner, that then they may declare themselves. The 
poets feign that the rest of the gods would have bound Jupiter, 
which he hearing of, by the counsel of Pallas, sent for Briareus, 
with his hundred hands, to come in to his aid' — an emblem, no 
doubt, to show how safe it is for monarchs to make sure of the 
good- will of common people. 

To give moderate liberty for griefs and discontentments to 
evaporate (so it be Avithout too great insolency or bravery^), is 
a safe way ; for he that turneth the humours back, and maketh 
the wound bleed inwards, endangereth malign ulcers and per- 
nicious impostlmmations. 

The part of Epimetheus might well become Prometheus, in 
the case of discontentments ; for there is not a better provision 
against them. Epimetheus, when griefs and evils flew abroad, 
at last shut the lid, and kept hope in the bottom of the vessel. 
Certainly, the politic and artificial nourishing and entertaining 
of hopes, and carrying men from hopes to hopes, is one of the 
best antidotes against the poison of discontentments ; and it is 
a certain sign of a wise government and proceeding, when it 
can hold men's hearts by hopes, when it cannot by satisfaction ; 
and when it can handle things in such manner as no evil shall 
appear so peremptory but that it hath some outlet of hope : 
which is the less hard to do, because both particular persons 
and factions are apt enough to flatter themselves, or, at least, to 
brave^ that which they believe not. 

Also the foresight and prevention, that there be no likely or 
fit head whereupon discontented persons may resort, and under 
whom they may join, is a known, but an excellent point of 
caution. I understand a fit head to be one that hath greatness 
and reputation, that hath confidence with the discontented party, 
and upon whom they turn their eyes, and that is thought dis- 
contented in his own particular; which kind of persons are 
either to be won and reconciled to the State, and that is a fast 
and true manner, or to be fronted with some other of the same 
party that may oppose them, and so divide the reputation. 
Generally, the dividing and breaking of all factions and com- 
binations that are adverse to the State, and settino- them at 



' Horn. 11. i. 398. « Bravery. See page 93. 

* Brave. To boast of. 



130 Of Seditions and Troubles. [Essay xv. 

distance/ or, at least, distrust among themselves, is not one of 
tlie worst remedies ; for it is a desj)erate case, if those that hold 
with the j^roceeding of the State be full of discord and faction, 
and those that are against it be entire and united. 

I have noted, that some witty and sharp speeches, which 
have fallen from princes, have given fire to seditions. Caesar 
did himself infinite hurt in that speech, ' Sylla nescivit literas, 
non potuit dictare ;" for it did utterly cut oif that hope which 
men had entertained, that he would at one time or other give 
over his dictatorshij). Galba undid himself by that speech, 
' Legi a se militem, non emi ;" for it put the soldiers out of 
hope of the donative. Probus, likewise, by that speech, 'Si 
vixero, non opus erit amplius Romano imperio militibus ;'* a 
speech of great despair for the soldiers ; and many the like. 
Surely princes had need, in tender matter and ticklish times, to 
beware what they say, especially in these short speeches, which 
fly abroad like darts, and are thought to be shot out of their 
secret intentions ; for, as for large discourses, they are fiat things, 
and not so much noted. 

Lastly, let princes, against all events, not be without some 
great person, one or rather more, of military valour, near unto 
them, for the repressing of seditions in their beginnings" for, 
without that, there useth to be more trepidation in court upon 
the first breaking out of trouble than were fit : and the State 
runneth the danger of that which Tacitus saith — ' Atque is 
habitus animorum fuit, ut pessimum facinus auderent pauci, 
plures vellent, omnes paterentur ;" but let such military per- 
sons be assured^ and well reputed of, rather than factious and 



■* Distance. Enmity, 

' Banqno was your enemy. 
So is he miine ; and in such bloody distance, 
That every minute of his being thrusts 
Against my neai-'st of life.' — Shakespere. 
^ ' Sylla was ignorant of letters, and could not dictate.' (This pun is attributed 
•to Cfesar by Suetonius.) — Vit. C. Jvl. Ces. Il, 1. 

^ • He levied soldiers, and did not buy them.' — Tac. Hist. i. 5. 

* 'If I live, the Roman Empire will need no more soldiers.' — Flav. Ves. Vit. 
Prob. 20. 

* 'And such was the state of their minds, that the worst villany a few dared, 
more approved of it, and all tolerated it.' — Hist. i. 28. 

' Assured. Ifot to be doubted; truat-worthy. ' It is an assured experience, that 
iflint laid at the root of a tree will make it prosper.' — Bacon's Natural Histvu'y. 



Essay xy.] Annotations. 181 

popular — holding also good correspondence witli tlie other 
great men in the State, or else the remedy is worse than the 
disease. 



ANNOTATIONS, 

^neither let any prince or State he secure concerning discontent- 
merits, because they have heen often, or have heen long, and 
yet no peril hath ensued. . . . .' 

Men linderrate the danger of any evil that has been escaped. 
An evil is not necessarily unreal, because it has been often 
feared without just cause. The wolf does sometimes enter in, 
and make havoc of the flock, though there have been many false 
alarms. The consequence of feeling too secure, and not being 
prepared, may be most disastrous when the emergency does 
arise. Tlie existence of the power to meet the emergency is 
not the less important because the occasions for the exercise of 
it may be very few. K any one should be so wearied with the 
monotonous ' All's well' of the nightly guardians of a camp, 
hour after hour, and night after night, as to conclude that their 
service was superfluous, and, accordingly, to dismiss them, how 
much real danger, and how much unnecessary apprehension, 
would be the result. 

"Let no prince Queasiire the danger of discontentments ly this 

whether the griefs whereupon they rise he great or 

small ' 

The importance of this caution with regard to 'small griefs' 
will not be denied by any one who has observed the odd 
limitations of power in those who seem despotic, and yet cannot 
do what seem little things. E. g., when the Romans took posses- 
sion of Egypt, the people submitted, without the least resistance, 
to have their lives arid property at the mercy of a foreign 
nation ; but one of the Roman soldiers happening to kill a cat 
in the streets of Alexandria, they rose on him and tore him 
limb from limb ; and the excitement was so violent, that the 



132 Of Seditions and Troubles. [Essay xy. 

generals overlooked the outrage for feai* of insurrection! — 
Claudius Ctesai* tried to introduce a letter which was wanting 
in the Eoman Alphabet — ^the consonant V as distinct from U, — 
they having but one character for both. He ordered that j[ 
(an F reversed) should be that character. It appears on some 
inscriptions in his time ; but he could not establish it, though 
he could Kn.L or jjlunder his subjects at pleasure. So can the 
Emperor of Russia ; but he cannot change the style. It would 
displace the days of saints whom his people worship, and it 
would produce a formidable insurrection I Other instances of 
this strange kind of anomaly might doubtless be produced. 

' The causes and motives of seditions are . . . .' 

Amongst the causes of sedition Bacon has not noticed what 
is, perhaps, tlie source of the most dangerous kinds of sedition, 
the keeping of a certain portion of the population in a state of 
helotism, — as subjects without being citizens, or only imperfectly 
and partially citizens. For men will better submit to an un- 
distinguishing despotism that bears down all classes alike, than 
to an invidious distinction drawn between privileged and sub- 
ject classes. 

On this point I will take the liberty of citing a passage from 
a former work : — 

' The exclusion from the rights of citizenship of all except a 
certain favoured class — which was the system of the Grecian 
and other ancient republics — ^lias been vindicated by their 
example, and recommended for general adoption, by some 
writers, who have proposed to make sameness of religion cor- 
respond in modern States to the sameness of race among the 
ancients, — to substitute for their hereditary citizensMp the pro- 
fession of Christianity in one and the name National Church. 

' But attentive and candid reflection will show that this 
would be the worst possible imitation of one of the worst of the 
Pagan institutions ; that it would be not only still more iinwise 
than the unwise example proposed, but also even more opposite 
to the spirit of the Christian religion than to the maxims of 
sound policy. 

'Of the system itself, under various modifications, and of 
its effects, under a variety of circumstances, we find abundant 



Essay xv.] Annotatlom. 133 

records througliout a large portion of history, ancient and 
modern; from that of the Israelites when sojourners in Egypt, 
down to that of the Turkish Empire and its Greek and other 
christian subjects- And in those celebrated ancient republics 
of which we have such copious accounts in the classic writers, 
it is well known that a man's being born of free parents within 
the territory of a certain State, had nothing to do with confer- 
ring civil rights ; while his contributing towards the expenses 
of its government, was rather considered as the badge of an 
alien/ the imposing of a tax on the citizens being mentioned by 
Cicero* as something calamitous and disgraceful, and not to be 
thought of but in some extraordinary emergency. 

'JSTor were the j)i"opoi'tionate numhers at all taken into 
account In Attica, the meto3ci or sojourner appear to have 
constituted about a third of the ti*ee population ; but the helots 
in Laeedsemon, and the subjects of the Carthaginian and Roman 
Republics, outnumbered the citizens, in the proportion probably 
of fivfe, and sometimes of ten or twenty to one. Nor again 
were alien families considered as such in reference to a more 
ref^ent settlement in the territory ; on the contrary, they were 
often the ancient occupiers of the soil, who had been subdued 
by another race ; as the Siculi (from whom Sicily derived its 
name,) by the Siceliots or Greek colonists. 

'The system in question has been explained and justified on 
the ground that distinctions of race implied important religious 
and moral differences ; such that the admixture of men thus 
differing in the main points of human life, would have tended, 
imles.s one race had a complete ascendancy, to confuse all no- 
tions of right and wrong. And the principle, accordingly, of 
the ancient republics, — which has been thence commended as 
wise and good — has been represented as that of making agree- 
ment in religion and morals the test of citizenship. 

'That this however was not, at least in many instances, even 
the professed principle, is undeniable. The Lacedaemonians 
reduced to helotism the Messenians, who were of Doric race, 
like themselves ; while it appeal's from the best authorities, that 
the kings of those very Lacedaemonians were of a different race 
from the people, being not of Dorian, but of Achaian extrac- 



• Matt. xvii. 25. " De Off. b. 11, ch. xxi. 

12 



134 Of Seditions and TrouUes. [Essay xt. 

tion.' There could not have been therefore,, at least universally, 
any snch total incompatibility between the moral institutions 
and principles of the different races. The vindication, there- 
fore,,^of the system utterly fails, even on the very grounds 
assimied by its advocates. 

'If, however, in any instance such an incompatibility did 
existy or (what is far more probable) such a mutual dislike and 
jealousy, originating in a narrow spirit of clanship — ^as to render 
apparently hopeless the complete amalgamation of two tribes as 
fellow-citizens on equal terms, the wisest — the only wise — 
course w^ould have been an entire separation. Whether the 
one tribe migrated in a mass to settle elsewhere, or the terri- 
tory were divided between the two, so as to form distinct inde- 
pendent States, — in either mode, it would have been better fo? 
both parties, than that one should remain tributary subjects 
of the other. Even the expulsion of the Moors and Jews from 
Spain, was not, I am convinced, so great an evil, as it would 
have been to retain them as a degraded and tributaiy class ; 
like the Greek subjects of the Turkish empire. 

'For, if there be any one truth which the deductions of 
reason alone,, independent of history, would lead us to antici- 
pate, and which again history alone wrould establish indepen- 
dently of antecedent reasoning, it is this : that a whole class of 
men placed permanently undjer the ascendancy of another as 
subjects, without the rights of citizens, must be a source, at the 
best, of weakness, and generally of danger, to the State. Tliey 
cannot well be expected, and have rarely been found, to evince 
much hearty patriotic feeling towards a community in w^hich 
their neighbours looked down on them as an inferior and perma- 
nently degraded species. While kept in brutish ignorance, 
poverty, and weakness, they are likely to feel — like the ass in 
the fable — ^indifferent whose panniers they bear. If they in- 
crease in power, wealth, and mental development, they are 
likely to be ever on the watch for an opportunity of shaking off 
a degrading yoke. Even a complete general despotism, weigh- 
ing down all classes without exception, is, in general, far more 



' It is very remarkable that this fact has been adverted to, and prominently set 
forth by an author who, in the very same work, maintains the impossibility of 
different races being amalgamated together in the same community. He appears 
to have quite forgotten that he had completely disproved his own theory. 



Essay xv.] Annotations, 135 

readily borne, tlian invidious distinctions drawn between a 
favoured and a depressed race of subjects ; for men feel an 
insult more than a mischief done to them ;^ and feel no insult 
so much as one daily and hourly inflicted by their immediate 
neighbours. A Persian subject of the Great King had probably 
no greater share of civil rights than a helot ; but he was likely 
to be less galled by his depression, from being surrounded by those 
who, though some of them possessed power and dignity, as com- 
pared with himself, yet were equally destitute of civil rights, 
and abject slaves, in common with him, of the one great despot. 

' It is notorious, accordingly, how much Sparta was weakened 
and endangered by the helots, always ready to avail themselves 
of any public disaster as an occasion for revolt. The frightful 
expedient was resorted to of thinning their numbers from time 
to time by an organized system of massacre ; yet, though a 
great part of the territory held by Lacedaemon was left a desert,* 
security could not be purchased, even at this price. 

' We find Hannibal, again, maintaining himself for sixteen 
years in Italy against the Romans ; and though scantily sup- 
plied from Carthage, recruiting his ranks, and maintaining his 
positions, by tli€ aid of Roman subjects. Indeed, almost every 
page of history teaches the same lesson, and proclaims in every 
different form, ' How long shall these men be a snare unto us ? 
Let the people go, that they may serve their God : knowest 
thou not yet that Egypt is destroyed?" ' The remnant of these 
nations which thou slialt not drive out, shall be pricks in thine 
eyes, and thorns in thy side.'* 

' But beside the other causes which have always operated to 
perpetuate, in spite of experience, so impolitic a system, the 
difficulty of changing it, when once established, is one of the 
greatest. The false step is one which it is peculiarly difficult 
to retrace. Men long debarred from civil rights, almost 
always become ill fitted to enjoy them. The brutalizing effects 
of oppression, which cannot immediately be done away by its 
removal, at once furnish a j^retext for justifying it, and make 
relief hazardous. Kind and liberal treatment, if very cautiously 



' 'A6iKov/j,Evoi, (if EoiKEV, ol uvdpuTTOi [lulTiOV opyi^ovTac, 7] (iia^ofievoc.^ 
TTiucyd. 6. L § 77. 

' Thucyd. b. iv. ' Exodus x. 7. ^ Numbers xxxiii. 55. 



136 Of Seditions and TrouUes. [Essay xv. 

and judiciously bestowed, will gradually and slowly advance men 
towards the condition of being worthy of such treatment ; but 
(/ treat men as aliens or enemies — ^as slaves, as children or as brutes, 
and they will S2)eedlly and cam^letely justify your conduct.'* 



' To which purpose (the removing of sedition) serveth 

the repressing of waste and excess hy sumptuary laws 
.... the regulating of prices of things vendible ' 

Bacon here falls into the error which always prevails in the 
earlier stages of civilization, and which accordingly was more 
prevalent in his age than in ours — ^that of over-governing. 

It may be reckoned a kind of puerility : for you will generally 
find young persons prone to it, and also those legislators who 
lived in the younger (i. e. the earlier) ages of the world. They 
naturally wish to enforce by law everything that they consider 
to be good, and forcibly to prevent men from doing anything 
that is unadvisable. And the amount of mischief is incal- 
culable that has been caused by this meddlesome kind of 
legislation. For not only have such legislators been, as often 
as not, mistaken, as to what really is beneficial or hurtful, but 
also when they have been right in their judgment on that point, 
they have often done more harm than good by attempting to 
enforce by law what had better be left to each man's own 
discretion. 

As an example of the first kind of error, may be taken the 
many efforts made by the legislators of various countries to 
restrict foreign commerce, on the supposition that it would 
be advantageous to supply all our wants ourselves, and that we 
must be losers by purchasing anything from abroad. If a 
weaver were to spend half his time in attempting to make 
shoes and furniture for himself, or a shoemaker to neglect his 
trade while endeavouring to raise corn for his own consumption, 
they would be guilty of no greater folly than has often been, 
and in many instances still is, forced on many nations by their 
governments ; which have endeavoured to withdraw from agri- 



' Essay on some of the Danyers to the Clwistian Faith. 2nd edition, note F. 
pp. 212-'21Y. 



Essay xv.] Annotations. 137 

culture to manufactures a people possessing abundance of fer- 
tile land, or who have forced them to the home cultivation of 
such articles as their soil and climate are not suited to, and thus 
compelled them to supply themselves with an inferior com- 
modity at a greater cost. 

■ On the other hand, there is no doubt that early hours are 
healthful, and that men ought not to squander their money on 
luxurious feasts and costly dress, unsuited to their means ; but 
when governments thereupon undertook to prescribe the hours 
at which men should go to rest, requiring them to put out 
their lights at the sound of the curfew-bell, and enacted 
sumptuary laws as to the garments they were to wear, and the 
dishes of meat they were to have at their tables, this meddling 
kind of legislation was always found excessively galling, and 
moreover entirely ineftectual ; since men's dislike to such laws 
always produced contrivances for evading the spirit of them. 

Bacon, however, was far from always seeing his way rightly 
in these questions ; which is certainly not to be wondered at, 
considering that we, who live three centuries later, have only 
just emerged from thick darkness into twilight, and are far from 
having yet completely thrown oif those erroneous notions of 
our forefathers. The regulating of j)Hces by law still existed, 
in the memory of most of us, with respect to bread — and the 
error of legislating against engrossing of commodities has only 
very lately been exploded. 

[The following extract from the Annual Reguter for 1Y79, (Appendix, p. 114,) 
may serve to show what absurd notions on political economy were afloat even 
in the memory of persons now living. The extract is from a ' Plan by Dr. 
Fi'anklin and Mr. Dalrymple for benefiting distant countries.'] : — 

'■Fair coininEvce is^ where equal values are exchanged for 
equal, the expense of transport included. Thus, if it costs A 
in England as much labour and charge to raise a bushel of 
wheat, as it costs B in France to produce four gallons of wine, 
then are four gallons of wine the fair exchange for a bushel of 
wheat, A and B meeting at half distance with their commodities 
to make the exchange. The advantage of this fair commerce 
is, that each party increases the number of his enjoyments, 
having, instead of wheat alone, or wine alone, the use of both 
wheat and wine. 
12* 



138 Of Seditions and Troiibles. [Essay xv. 

^ Where the labour and expense of producing both com- 
modities are known to both parties, bargains will generally be 
fair and equal. Where they are known to one party only, 
bargains will often be miequal, — knowledge taking its advan- 
tage of ignorance. 

' Thus, he that carries a thousand bushels of wheat abroad to 
sell, may not probably obtain so great a profit thereon as if he 
had first turned the wheat into manufactures, by subsisting 
therewith the workmen while producing those manufactures. 
Since there are many expediting and facilitating methods of 
working, not generally known; and strangers to the manu- 
factures, though they know pretty well the expense of raising 
wheat, are unacquainted with those short methods of working, 
and thence being apt to suppose more labour employed in the 
manufactures than there really is, are more easily imposed on 
in their value, and induced to allow more for them than they 
are honestly worth. Thus, the advantage of having manufac- 
tures in a country, does not consist, as is commonly supposed, 
in their highly advancing the value of rough materials of which 
they are formed : since though six pennyworths of flax may 
be worth twenty shillings when worked into lace, yet the very 
cause of its being worth twenty shillings is, that, besides the 
flax, it has cost nineteen shillings and sixpence in subsistence 
to the manufacturer. But the advantage of manufactures is, 
that under their shape provisions may be more easily carried to 
a foreign market ; and by their means our traders may more 
easily cheat strangers. Few, where it is not made, are judges 
of the value of lace. The importer may demand forty, and 
perhaps get thirty shillings, for that which cost him biit twenty. 

Finally, there seem to be but three ways for a nation to 
acquire wealth. The first is by war, as the Romans did, in 
plundering their conquered neighbours. This is robbery. The 
second by commerce, which is generally cheating. The third is 
by agriculture, the only honest way, wherein man receives a 
real increase of the seed sown in the ground, in a kind of con- 
tinual miracle wrought by the hand of G©d in his favour, as a 
reward for his innocent life and virtuous industry.' 

Tlie reader will observe that in this disquisition, lalour is 
made the sole measure of value, without any regard to the 



Essay xv.] Aniiotations. 139 

questions, whose labonr? or how directed f and, with lohat 
results f On this j^rinciple, therefore, if a Kaphael takes only 
as much time and trouble in making a line picture, as a shoe- 
maker in making a pair of hoots, he is a cheat if he receives 
more for his picture than the other for the boots ! And if it 
costs the same labour to produce a cask of ordinary Cape-wine, 
and one of Constantia, they ought in justice to sell for the same 
price ! Thus, our notions of morality, as well as of political 
economy, are thrown into disorder. ti 

Yet such nonsense as this passed current in the days of our 
fathers. And it is only in our own days that people have been 
permitted to buy food where they could get it cheapest. 

' There useth to he more trepidation in court ujpon the first 
breaking out of troicbles tha/n were fit . . . .' 

To expect to tranquillize and benefit a country by gratifying 
its agitators, would be like the practice of the superstitious of 
old wdth their sympathetic powders and ointments ; who, instead 
of applying medicaments to the wound, contented themselves 
with salving the sword which had inflicted it. Since the days 
of Dane-gelt downwards, nay, since the world was created, 
nothing but evil has resulted from concessions made to intimi- 
dation. 



ESSAY XVI. OF ATHEISM. 

I HAD ]-atlier believe all the fables in the Legend, and the 
Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is 
without a mind ; and, therefore, God never wrought miracles to 
convince' atheism, because his ordinary works convince it. It 
is true, that a littl^)hilosophy inclineth Man's mind to atheism, 
but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion ; 
for while the mind of Man lotketh upon second causes scattered, 
it may sometimes rest in tliein, and go no farther ; but when it 
beholdeth the chain of them confederate, and linked together, it 
must needs fly to Providence and Deity ; nay, even that school 
which is most accused of atheism, doth most demonstrate 
religion ; that is, the school of Leucippus, and Democritus, and 
Epicurus — for it is a thousand times more credible, that four 
mutable elements and one immutable fifth essence, duly and 
eternally placed, need no God, than that an army of infinite 
small portions, or seeds unplaced, should have produced this 
order and beauty without a divine marshal. The Scripture 
saith, ' The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God ;'^ it is 
not said, ' The fool hath thought in his heart ; so as' he rather 
saith it l)y rote to himself, as that' he would have, than that he 
can thoroughly believe it, or be persuaded of it ; for none deny 
there is a God, but those for whom it maketh' that there were 
no God. It appeareth in nothing more that atheism is rather 
in the lip than in the heart of Man, than by this, that atheists 
will ever be talking of that their opinion, as if they fainted in 
it themselves, and would be glad to be strengthened by the 
consent* of others ; nay, more, you shall have atheists strive to 
get disciples, as it faretli with other sects ; and, which is most 
of all, you shall have them that will suffer for atheism, and 



' Convince. Convict ; prove guiltii. ' To convince all that are ungodly among 
them of all their ungodly deeds.' — Epistle of Jude. 

2 Psalm xiv. 1. ' As. Tliat. See page 23. 

* That. What. See page 64. 

* For whom it maketh. To whom it would be advantageous. 

•Consent. Agreement in opinion. ' Socrates, by the consent of all excellent 
writers that followed him, was approved to be the wisest man of all Greece.' — Sir 
J. Elyot. 



Essay xvi.] Of Atheism. 141 

not recant: whereas, if tliey did trnlj think that there were 
no such thing as God, why should they trouble themselves? 
Epicurus is charged, that he did but dissemble for his credit's 
sake, when he affirmed there were blest natures, but such as 
enjoy themselves without having respect to the government 
of tlie world, wherein they say he did temporize, though in 
secret he thought there was no God ; but certainly he is tra- 
duced, for his words are noble and divine ; ' Non deos vulgi 
negare profanum : sed vulgi opiniones, diis applicare profanum.'' 
Plato could have said no more ; and although he had the 
confidence'' to deny the administration, he had not the power to 
deny the nature. The Indians of the West have names for their 
particular gods, though they have no name for God ; as if the 
heathens should have had the names Jupiter, Apollo, Mars, &c., 
but not the word Dens: which shows, that even those bar- 
barous people have the notion, though they have not the lati- 
tude and extent of it ; so that against atheists the very savages 
take part with the very subtilest philosophers. Tlie contem- 
plative atheist is rare — a Diagoras, a Bion, a Lucian, perhaps, 
and some others : and yet they seem to be more than they are, 
for that all that impugn a received religion, or superstition, are, 
by the adverse part, branded with the name of atheists ; but the 
great atheists indeed are hypocrites, which are ever handling 
holy things, but without feeling, so as they must needs be cau- 
terized in the end. 

Tlie causes of atheism are, divisions in religion if there 
be many ; for any one main division addeth zeal to both sides, 
but many divisions introduce atheism : another is, scandal of 
priests, when it is come to that which St. Bernard saith, 
'Non est jam dicere, ut populus, sic sacerdos; quia nee sic 
populus, ut sacerdos." A third is, a custom of profane scoffing in 
holy matters, which doth by little and little deface the reverence 
of religion : and lastly, learned times, especially with peace and 
prosperity ; for troubles and adversities do more bow men's 
minds to religion. They that deny a God destroy a man's 



' ' It is not profane to deny the gods of the common people, but it is profane to 
apply to the gods the notions of the common people.' — Diog. Laert. x. 123. 

^ Confidence. Boldness. 

' ' It is not now to be said, As the people, so the, priest; because the people are 
not Buch as the pcifiets'&re.' 



142 Of AtJieism. [Essay xvi. 

nobility, for certainly Man is of kin to the beasts by his body ; 
and if he be not of kin to God by his spirit, he is a base and 
ignoble creature. It destroys likewise magnanimity, and the 
raising human nature ; for take an example of a dog, and mark 
what a generosity and courage he will put on when he finds 
himself maintained by a man, who to hmi is instead of a God, 
or melior natural — which courage is manifestly such as that 
creature, without that confidence' of a better nature than his 
ow^n, could never attain. So man, when he resteth and assureth 
Iiimself upon divine protection and favour, gathereth a force and 
faith which human nature in itself could not obtain ; therefore, 
as atheism is in all respects hateful, so in this, that it depriveth 
liuman nature of the means to exalt itself above human frailty. 
As it is in particular persons, so it is in nations : — never was 
there such a state for magnanimity as Rome. Of this state 
hear what Cicero saith : ' Quam volumus, licet, patres conscripti, 
nos amenus, tamen nee numero Hispanos, nee robore Gallos, 
nee calliditate Poenos, nee artibus Grsecos, nee denique hoc ipso 
hujus gentis et terras domestico nativoque sensu Italos ipsos et 
Latinos ; sed pietate, ac religione, atque hac una sapientia, quod 
deorum immortalium numine omnia regi, gubernarique per- 
speximus, omnes gentes nationesque superavimus." 



ANNOTATIONS. 

* Ihadrather believe all thefiibles in the Legend^ andthe Talmud^ 
and the Alcoran^ than that this universal frame is without a 
mind.'' 

It is evident from this, that Bacon had seized the just view 
respecting credulity j seeing plainly that 'to ^^'sbelieve is to 

* A better nature. 

* Confidence. Firm belief. ' Society is built upon trust, and trust upon confi- 
dence of one another's integrity.' — South. 

' ' Let us be as partial to oivrselves as we will, Conscript Fathers, yet we have 
not surpassed the Spaniai-ds in number, nor the Gauls in strength, nor the Cartha- 
ginians in cunning, nor the Greeks in the arts, nor, lastly, the Latins and Italians 
of this nation and land, in natural intelligence about home-matters; but we have 
excelled all nations and people in piety and religion, and in this one wisdom of fully 
recognising that all things are ordered and governed by the power of the immortal 
gods.' — Cic. De Har. Eesp. 9. 



t 

Essay xvi. Annotations. 143 

believe,' If one man believes that there is a God, and another 
that there is no God, whichever holds the less reasonable of 
these two opinions is chargeable with credulity. For, the only 
way to avoid credulity and incredulity — the two necessarily going 
together — is to listen to, and yield to, the best evidence, and to 
believe and disbelieve on good grounds. 

And however imperfectly and indistinctly we may under- 
stand the attributes of God — of the Eternal Being who made 
and who governs all things — the ' mind of this universal 
frame,' the proof of the existence of a Being possessed of 
them is most clear and full ; being, in fact, the very same evi- 
dence on which we believe in the existence of one another. How 
do we know that men exist ? (that is, not merely Beings having 
a certain visible bodily form — for that is not what we chieily 
imply by the word Man, — ^but rational agents^ such as we call 
men). Surely not by the immediate evidence of our senses, 
(since mind is not an object of sight), but by observing the 
things performed — the manifest result of rational contrivance. 
If we land in a strange country, doubting whether it be in- 
habited, as soon as we find, for instance, a boat, or a house, 
we are as perfectly certain that a man has been there, as if he 
had aj^peared before our eyes. Yet the atheist believes that 
' this universal frame is without a mind ;' that it was the produc- 
tion of chance ; that the particles of matter of which the world 
consists, moved about at random, and accidentally fell into the 
shape it now bears. Surely the atheist has little reason to 
make a boast of his ' incredulity,' while believing anything so 
strange and absurd as that ' an army of infinitely small portions 
of seeds unplaced, should have produced this order and beauty 
without a divine marshal.' 

In that phenomenon in language, that both in the Greek and 
Latin, nouns of the neuter gender, denoting things., invariably 
had the nominative and the accusative the same, or rather, had 
an accusative only, employed as a nominative when required, — 
may there not be traced an indistinct consciousness of the 
persuasion that a mere thing is not capable of being an agen^. 
which a person only can really be ; and that the possession of 
power, strictly so called, by physical causes, is not conceivable, 
or their capacity to maintain, any more than to produce at first, 
the system of the Universe ? — whose continued existence, as 



144 Of Atheism. [Essay xvi. 

well as its origin, seems to depend on the continued operation 
of the great Creator. May tliere not be in this an admission 
that the laws of nature presuppose an agent, and are incapable 
of being the cause of their own observance ? 

' JEpicurus is charged, that he did hut dissemhU for his credits salce, 

when hs affirmed there were hlessed natures wherein, 

they say he did hut temporise, though in secret he thought 
there was no God. But certainly he is traduced^ 

It is remarkable that Bacon, like many others very con- 
versant with ancient Mythology, failed to perceive that the 
pagan nations were in reality atheists. They mistake altogether 
the real character of the pagan religions.^ Tliey imagine that 
all men, in every age and country, had always designed to 
worship one Supreme God, the Maker of all tilings ;^ and that 
the error of the Pagans consisted merely in the false accounts 
they gave of Him, and m their worshipping other inferior gods 
besides. But this is altogether a mistake. Bacon was, in this, 
misled by words, as so many have been, — the very delusion he 
60 earnestly warns men against. Tlie pagans used the word 
' God ;' but in a ditierent sense from us. For by the word God, 
we understand an Eternal Being, who made and who governs 
all things. And if any one should deny that there is any such 
Being, we should say that he was an atheist ; even though he 
might believe tliat there do exist Beings superior to Man, such 
as the Fairies and Genii, in whom the uneducated in many 
parts of Europe still believe. 

Accordingly, the apostle Paul {Ephes. ii. 12) expressly calls 
the ancient Pagans atheists {ddeoi), thougli he well knew that 
they worshipped certain supposed superior Beings which they 
called gods. But he says in the Epistle to the Jiomans, that 
' they worshipped the creature more than^ (that is, instead of) 
the Creator.' And at Lystra {Acts xvi. 15), when the people 



See Lessons on Religious Wmsliip, L. ii. 
See Pope's Universal Prayer : — 

' Father of all, in every age, 
In every clime adored ; 
By saint, by savage, and by sage, 
Jehovah, Jove, or Lord.' 
Ilopa Thv KTlaavra. 



Essay xvi.] Annotations. 14:5 

were going to do sacrifice to him and Barnabas, mistaking tliem 
for two of their gods, he tokl them to ' turn from those vanities 
to serve the living God who made heaven and earthJ 

This is what is declared in the first sentence of the Booh of 
Genesis. And so far were tlie ancient Pagans from believing 
that 'in the beginning God made the heavens and the earth,' 
that, on the contrary, the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, 
and many other natural objects, were among the venj gods they 
adored. They did, indeed, believe such extravagant fables as 
Bacon alludes to, and which he declares to be less incredible 
than that ' this .universal frame is without a mind ;' and yet, 
they did also believe that it is without a mind ; that is, without 
what he evidently means by ' a mind'— an eternal, intelligent 
Maker and Ruler. Most men would understand by ' an atheist' 
one who disbelieves the existence of any such personal agent ; 
though believing (as every one must) that there is some kind 
of cause for everything that takes place. 

' A custom of profane scoffing in holy matters^ 

In reference to ' the profane scoffing in holy matters,' it is 
to be observed that jests on sacred objects are, when men are 
so disposed, the most easily produced of any; because the 
contrast between a dignified and a low image, exhibited in 
combination (in which the whole force of the ludicrous consists,) 
is, in this case, the most striking. It is commonly said, that 
there is no wit in profane jests ; but it would be hard to frame 
any definition of wit that should exclude them. It would be 
more correct to say (and I really believe that is what is really 
meant) that the practice displays no gx^^i powers oi wit because 
the subject matter renders it so particularly easy ; and that (for 
the very same reason) it affords the least gratification (apart from 
all higher considerations) to judges of good taste ; since a great 
part of the pleasure afforded by wit results from 2. perception 
of skill displayed and difficulty surmounted. 

We have said, apart from all higher considerations; for surely 
there is something very shocking to a well-disposed mind in 
such jests, as those, for instance, so frequently heard, in con- 
nexion with Satan and his agency. Suppose a rational Being 
—an inhabitant of some other planet — could visit this, our 
13 K 



146 Of Atheism. [Essay xvi. 

earth, and witness the gaiety of heart with which Satan, and 
his agents, and his victims, and the dreadful doom reserved for 
them, and everything relating to the subject, are, by many 
persons, talked of and laughed at, and resorted to as a source 
of amusement ; what inference would he be likely to draw ? 

Doubtless he would, at first, conclude that no one believed 
anything of all this, but that we regarded the whole as a string 
of fables, like the heathen mythology, or the nursery tales of 
fairies and enchanters, which are told to amuse children. But 
when he came to learn that these things are not only true^ but 
are actually believed by the far greater part of those who, 
nevertheless, treat them as a subject of inirth^ what would he 
think of us then? He would surely regard this as a most 
astounding proof of the great art, and of the great inj&uence 
of that Evil Being who can have so far blinded men's under- 
standings, and so depraved their moral sentiments, and so 
hardened their hearts, as to lead them, not merely to regard 
with careless apathy their spiritual enemy, and the dangers they 
are exposed to from him, and the final ruin of his victims, but 
even to find amusement in a subject of such surpassing horror, 
and to introduce allusions to it by way of a jest ! Surely, 
generally speaking, right-minded persons are accustomed to 
regard wickedness and misery as most unfit subjects for jesting. 
They would be shocked at any one who should find amusement 
in the ravages and slaughter perpetrated by a licentious soldiery 
in a conquered country ; or in the lingering tortures inflicted 
by wild Indians on their prisoners ; or in the burning of heretics 
under the Inquisition. Nay, the A^ery Inquisitors themselves, 
who have thought it their duty to practise such cruelties, would 
have been ashamed to be thought so brutal as to regard the 
sufiPerings of their victims as a subject of mirth. And any one 
wdio should treat as a jest the crimes and cruelties of the French 
Revolution, would generally be deemed more depraved than 
even the perpetrators themselves. 

It is, however, to be observed, tlmt.we are not to be off'ended 
as if sacred matters were laughed at, when some folly that has 
heenfoived into coiinexion with them is exposed. When things 
really ridiculous are mixed up with religion, who is to be 
blamed ? Not he who shows that they are ridiculous, and no 
parts of religion, but those who disfigure truth by blending 



Essay xvL] Annotations. 147 

falsehood witli it. It is true, indeed, that to attack even error 
in religion with mere ridicule is no wise act ; because good 
things may be ridiculed as well as bad. But it surely cannot 
be our duty to abstain from showing plainly that absurd things 
iire absurd, merely because people cannot help smiling at them. 
A tree is not injured by being cleared of moss and lichens ; nor 
truth, by having folly or sophistry torn away from around it. 

It is a good plan, with a young pei"son of a character to 
be much affected bj ludicrous and absurd representations, to 
show him plainly, by examples, that there is nothing which may 
not be so represented ; he will hardly need to be told that 
everything is not a mere joke : and he may thus be secured 
from falling into a contempt of those particular things which 
he may at any time happen to find so treated ; and, instead 
of being led by ' profane scoffing on holy matters into atheism,' 
as Bacon suppoges, he will be apt to pause and reflect that it 
may be as well to try over again, with serious candour, every- 
thing which has been hastily given up as flt only for ridicule, 
and to abandon the system of scoffing altogether ; looking at 
everything on the right side as well as on the wrong, and 
trying how any system will look, standing upright, as well as 
topsy-turvy. 

' The causes of atheism are ' 



Among the causes of atheism, Bacon has omitted one noticed 
by him as one of the causes of superetition, and yet it is not 
less a source of infidelity — 'the taking an aim at divine matters 
by human, which cannot but breed mixture of imaginations.' 
Now, in human nature there is no more powerful principle than 
a craving for infallibility in religious matters. To examine and 
re-examine, — to reason and reflect, — to hesitate, and to decide 
with caution, — to be always open to evidence, — and to acknowl- 
edge that, after all, we are liable to error ; — all this is, on many 
accounts, unacceptable to the human mind, — both to its diffidence 
and to its pride, — to its indolence, — its dread of anxious cares, 
—and to its love of self-satisfied and confident repose. And 
hence there is a strong prejudice in favour of any system which 
promises to put an end to tlie work of inquiring, at once and 
for ever, and to relieve us from all embarrassing; doubt and 



148 Of Atheism. [Essay xvi. 

uncomfortable distrust. Consequently this craving for infallibi- 
lity predisposes men towards the pretensions, either of a supposed 
unerring Church, or of those who claim or who promise imme- 
diate inspiration. And this promise of infallible guidance, not 
only meets Man's wishes, but his conjectures also. When we 
give the reins to our own feelings and fancies, such a provision 
appears as probable as it is desirable. If antecedently to the 
distinct announcement of any particular revelation, men were 
asked what kind of revelation they would wish to obtain, and 
again, what kind of revelation they would think it the most 
reasonable send probable that God should bestow, they would be 
likely to answer both questions by saying, 'Such a revelation as 
should provide some infallible guide on earth, readily accessible 
to eveiy man ; so that no one could possibly be in doiibt, on 
any point, as to what he was required to believe and to do ; but 
should be placed, as it were, on a kind of plain high road, 
which he would only have to follow steadily, without taking any 
care to look around him ; or, rather, in some kind of vehicle 
on such a road, in which he would be safely carried to his 
journey's end, even though asleep, provided he never quitted 
that vehicle. For,' a "man might say, 'if a book is put into 
my hands containing a divine revelation, and in which are 
passages that may be diiferently understood by different persons, 
— even by those of learning and ability, — even by men pro- 
fessing each to have earnestly prayed for spiritual guidance 
towards the right interpretation thereof, — and if, moreover, this 
book contains, in respect of some points of belief and of con- 
duct, no directions at all, — then there is a manifest necessity 
that I should be provided with an infallible interpreter of this 
book, who shall be always at hand to be consulted, and ready 
to teach me, without the possibility of mistake, the right 
meaning of every passage, and to supply all deficiencies and 
omissions in the book itself. For, otherwise, this revelation is, 
to me, no revelation at all. Though the book itself be perfectly 
free from all admixture of error, — though all that it asserts be 
true, and all its directions right, still it is no guide for me, unless 
I have an infallible certainty, on each point, what its assertions 
and directions are. It is in vain to tell me that the pole-star 
is always fixed in the north ; I cannot steer my course by it 
wdien it is obscured by clouds, so that I cannot be certain where 



Essay xvi.] JLniwtations. 149 

that star is, I need a comjxxss to steer by, wliicli I can consult 
at all time^- There is, therefore, a manifest necessity for an 
infallible and nniversally accessible interpreter on earth, as an 
indispensable accompaniment — and indeed e&sential part — of 
any divine rcrelation,' 

Snch wonld be the reasonings, and such the feelings, of a 
man left to himself to consider what sort of revelation from 
Heaven would be the most acceptable, and also the most j?ro- 
habh\ — the most adapted to meet his wishes and his vjants. 
And thns are mQw predisposed, both by their feelings and their 
antecedent conjectures, towards the admission of such preten- 
sions as have been alluded to. 

And it may be added, that any one who is thus induced to 
give himself up implicitly to the guidance of such a supposed 
infallible authority, witiiout presuming thenceforth to exercise 
his own judgment on any point relative to religion, or to think 
for himself at all on such matters, — such a one will be likely 
to regard this procedure as the very perfection of pious hmnility^ 
— as a most reverent observance of the rule of ^lean not to 
thine own understanding ;' though in reality it is tlie very error 
of improperly leaning to our own understanding. For, to 
resolve to believe that God must have dealt with mankind just 
in the way that we could tvisJi as the most desirable^ and in the 
way that to us seems the mo^t probahle^ — this is, in fact, to set 
uj) ourselves as Ms judges. It is to dictate to Him, in the spirit 
of INTaaman, who thought that the prophet would recover him 
by a touch ; and who chose to be healed by the waters of Abana 
and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, which he deemed l^etter 
than all the waters of Israel. 

But anything that falls in at once with men's wishes^ and 
with their conjectures, and which also presents itself to them in. 
the guise of a mii/uous humility, — this they are often found 
readily and firmly to believe, not onlj^ without evidence, but 
against all evidence. 

And thiLs it is in the present case. The principle that every 
revelation from Heaven necessarily requires, as an indispensable 
accompaniment, an infallible interpreter always at hand, — this 
principle clings so strongly to the minds of many men, that 
they are even found still to maintain it after they have ceased to 
believe in any revelation at all, or even in the existence of a God. 
13* 



150 Of Atheism. [Essay xvi. 

There can be no doubt of the fiict, that very great mimbei'S 
of men are to be found, — they are much more numerous in 
some pmts of tlie Continent than among us;, men not deficient 
in intelligence, nor altogether strangers to reflection, who, while 
they, for the most part conform externally to the prevailing 
religion, are invviu-dly utter unbelievers '\\\ Christianity ; yet still 
hold to the principle, — which, in fact, has had the chief share 
in mahing them unbelievers, — ^that the idea of a divi:ne keve- 
lATiON implies that of a universally accessible, infallible, 
INTERPRETER ; aiid that the one without the other is an absur- 
dity and contradiction. 

And this principle it is that has. mainly contributed to make. 
these men unbelievers. ¥or, when a tolerably intelligent and 
reflective man has fully satisfied himself that in point of fact 
no such provision has been made, — that no infallible and uni- 
vei"&ally accessible interpreter does exist on earth (and this is a 
conclusion which even the very words of Paul, in his discourse 
at Miletus {Acts xx.) would be alone fully sufiicient to establish) 
— when he has satisfied himself of the 'iian-exutence of this 
interpreter, yet still adheres to the principle of its supposed 
necessity, the consequence is inevitable, that he will at once 
reject all belief of Christianity. The ideas of a REVEi^vriON, 
and of an unerring interpreter, being, in his mind, iiiseparably 
conjoined, the overtlu'ow of the one belief cannot but cai*ry the 
other along with it. Such a person, therefore, will be apt to 
think it not worth while to examine the reasons in favour of 
any other form of Christianity, not pretending to iWnish an 
infallible interpreter. This — which, he is fully convinced, is 
essential to a Revelation from Heaven — is, by some Churches, 
claimed, but not established, while the rest do not even claim 
it. The pretensions of the one he has listened to, and delibe- 
rately rejected; those of the other he regards as not even worth 
listening to. 

The system, then, of reasoning from our own conjectures, 
as to the necessity of the Most High doing so and so, tends to 
lead a man to proceed from the rejection of bis own form of 
Christianity to a rejection of revelation altogether. But does 
it stop here ? Does not the same system lead naturally to 
Atheism also ? Experience shows that that consequence, which 
reason might have anticipated, does often actually take place. 



Essay xvi.] Amiotations. 151 

He who gives tlie reins to liis own conjectures as to what is 
necessary^ and thence draws his conclusions, will be likely to 
find a necessity for such divine interference in the aftairs of the 
world a.s does not in fact take place. He will deem it no less 
than necessary, that an omnipotent and all-wise and beneficent 
Behig should interfere to rescue the oppressed from the oppressor, 
• — the corrupted from the corruptor, — to deliver men from such 
temptations to evil as it is morally impossible they should 
withstand; — and, in short, to banish evil from tlie universe. 
And, since this is not done, he draws the inference that there 
cannot possibly be a God, and that to believe otherwise is a 
gross absurdity. Such a behef he may, indeed, consider as 
useful for keeping up a wholesome awe in the minds of the 
vulgar ; and for their sakes he may outwardly profess Christianity 
also ; even as the heathen philosophers of old endeavoured to 
keep up the popular superstitions ; but a real belief he will 
regard as something impossible to an intelligent and reflective 
mind. 

It is not meant that all, or the greater part, of those who 
maintain the principle here spoken of, are Atheists. We all 
know how common it is for men to fail of carrying out some 
principle (whether good or bad) which they have adopted ; — how 
common, to maintain the premises, and not perceive the con- 
'clusion to which they lead. But the tendeney of the principle 
itself is what is here pointed out : and the danger is anything 
but imaginary, of its leading, in fact, as it does naturally and 
consistently, to Atheism as its ultimate result. 

But surely, the Atheist is not hereby excused. To reject 
or undervalue the ^-evelation God has bestowed, urging that it 
is no revelation to «/^, or an insufficient one, because unerring 
certainty is not bestowed also, — because we are required to 
exercise patient diligence, and watchfulness, and candour, and 
humble self-distrust, — this would be as unreasonable as to dis- 
parage and reject the bountiful gift of eye-sight, because men's 
eyes have sometimes deceived them — because men have mis- 
taken a picture for the object imitated, or a mirage of the 
desert for a lake ; and have fancied they had the evidence of 
sight for the sun's motion ; and to infer from all this that we 
ought to blindfold ourselves, and be led henceforth by some 
guide who pretends to be himself not liable to such deceptions. 



152 Of AtJieism. [Essaj xvi. 

Let no one fear that by forbearing to forestall the judgment 
of the last clay, — by not presuming to dictate to the Most 
High, and boldly to pronounce in what way He tmist have im- 
parted a revelation to Man, — ^l)y renouncing all pretensions to 
infallibility, whether an immediate and personal, or a derived 
infallibility, — ^by owning themselves to be neither impeccable 
nor infallible (both claims are alike groundless), and by con- 
senting to undergo those trials of vigilance and of patience 
which God has appointed for them, — let them not fear that by 
this they will foifeit all cheeriul hope of final salvation, — all 
'joy and peace in believing.' The reverse of all this is the 
reality. While such Christians as have sought rather for i^eace^ 
— ^for mental tranquillity and satisfaction, — ^than for truths will 
often fail of both truth and peace, those of the opposite dis- 
position are more likely to attain both from their gracious 
Master. He has taught us ' to take heed that we be not deceived,' 
and to ' Beware of false prophets ;' and He has promised us 
His own peace and heavenly comfort. He has bid us watch 
and pray ; He has taught us, through His blessed Apostle, to 
' take heed to ourselves,' and to ' work out our salvation with 
fear and trembling ;' and He has declared, through the same 
Apostle, that ' He worketh in us ;' He has bid us rejoice in hope ; 
He has promised that He 'will not sufter us to be tempted 
above what we are able to bear ;' and he lias taught us to look 
forward to the time when we shall no longer ' see as by means 
of a mirror, darkly, but face to face ;' — when we shall know 
' not in part, but even as we are known ;' — when faith shall be 
succeeded by certainty, and hope be ripened into enjoyment. 
His precepts and his promises go together^ His support and 
comfort are given to those who seek for them in the way He 
has Himself appointed. 



ESSAY XVII. OF SUPERSTITION. 

IT were better to liave no opinion of God at all, than sncli an 
opinion as is nnwortli;^ of Ilini ; for the one is nnhelief, the 
other is contumely : and certainly superstition is the reproach 
of the Deity, Plutarch saitli well to that purpose : ' Surely,' 
saith he, ' I had rather a great deal, men should say there was 
no such a man at all as Plutarch, than that they should say 
there was one Plutarch, that wovdd eat his children as soon as 
they were born;" as the poets speak of Saturn: and as the 
contumely is greater towards God, so the danger is greater 
towards men. Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, 
to natural piety, to laws, to reputation — all which may be 
guides to an outward moral virtue, though religion were not, — 
but superstition dismounts all these, and erecteth an absolute 
monarchy in the minds of men ; therefore atheism did never 
perturb'' States ; for it makes men wary of themselves, as look- 
ing no further ; and we see the times inclined to 'atheism, as the 
time of Augustus Csesar, were civiP times; but superstition 
hath been the confusion of many States, and bringeth in a new 
frimum mohile,'' that ravisheth all the spheres of government. 
The master of superstition is the people, and in all superstition 
wise men follow fools ; and arguments are fitted to practice in 
a reversed order. It w^as gravely said, by some of the prelates 
'in the Council of Trent, where the doctrine of the schoolmen 
bare great sway, that the schoolmen were like astronomers, 
which did feign cQcentrics and epicycles, and such engines of 
orbs, to save the phenomena, though they knew there were no 
such things ; and, in like manner, that the schoolmen had 
framed a number of subtile and intricate axioms and theorems, 
to save the practice of the Church. 



' Plut. De Superstit. x. 

" Perturb. To disturb. ' They are content to suffer the penalties annexed, 
rather than perhirb the public peace.' — King Charles I. 
' Civil. Orderly; tranquil; civilized. 

' For rudest minds by harmony were caught. 
And civil life was by the Muses taught.' — Roscommon, 
* Primum mobile. See page 125. 



154 Of Sujperstition. [Essay xvii. 

The causes of superstition are pleasing and sensnal' rites and 
ceremonies ; excess of outward and pharisaical holiness ; over- 
great reverence of traditions, which cannot but load the Church; 
the stratagems of prelates for their own ambition and lucre ; the 
favouring too much of good intentions, M'hich openeth the gate to 
conceits and novelties ; the taking an aim at divine matters by 
human, which cannot but breed mixture of imaginations ; and, 
•lastly, barbarous times, especially joined with calamities and dis- 
asters. Superstition, without a veil, is a deformed thing ; for as 
it addeth deformity to an ape to be so like a man, so the simili- 
tude of superstition to religion makes it the more deformed ; and 
as wholesome meat corrupteth to little worms, so good forms and 
orders corrupt into a number of petty observances. There is a 
superstition in avoiding superstition, when men think to do 
best if they go farthest from the superstition formerly received ; 
therefore care would^ be had that (as it fareth in ill purgings) 
the good be not taken away with the bad, which commonly is 
done M'hen the people is the reformer. 

ANTITIIETA ON SUPERSTITION. 
Pro. Contra. 

* Qui zelo peccant, non probandi, sed ' Ut siniise, siniilitudo cum homine, 
tamen amandi sunt. defonnitateni addit; ita superstition!, 

* Those who go wrong from excess of similitudo cum religione. 

seal, cannot indeed be approved, but must 'As an ape is the mwe hideous for its 

nevertheless be loved.' resemblance to a man, so is superstition 

* * * * froon its resemblance to religion.' 

' PrjEstat nullam habere de diis opi- 
nionem, quam contumeliosam. 

' It is better to have no opinion at all 
of the gods, than a degrading one.' 



ANNOTATIONS. 

Some use the word superstition to denote any belief which 
they hold to be absurd, if those who hold it can give no ex- 
planation of it. For example, some fancy that the hair will 
not grow well if it be cut in the wane of the moon. But such 



' Sensual Affecting the senses. " "Would. Should. 



Essay xvii.] Annotations. 155 

a notion, tliongli it may be a groundless fancy, is not to be 
called in tlie strict sense, a superstition, unless it be connected 
with some sort of religious reverence for some supposed super- 
human agent. Neither is superstition (as it has been delined 
by a popular though superficial writer) ' an excess of religion' 
(at least in the ordinary sense of the word excess), as if any one 
could have too nncch of true religion, but any misdirection of 
religious feeling; manifested either in showing religious venera-» 
tion or regard to objects which deserve none ^ that is, properly 
speaking, the worship of false gods ; or, in the assignment of 
such a degree, or such a kind of religious veneration to any ob- 
ject, as that object, though worthy of some reverence, does not 
deserve ; or in the woi-ship of the true God through the medium 
of improper rites and ceremonies. 

It was the unsparing suppression of both those kinds of 
superstition which constituted the distinguished and peculiar 
merit of that upriglit and zealous prince, Ilezekiah. He was 
not satisfied, like many other kings, with putting down that 
branch of superstition which involves the breach of the Jirst 
Commandment — the setting up of false gods ; but was equally 
decisive in his reprobation of the other branch also — the worship 
of the true God by the medium of prohibited emblems, and 
with unauthorized and superstitious rites. Of these two kinds 
of superstition, the latter is continually liable, in practice, to 
slide into the former by such insensible degrees, that it is often 
hard to decide, in particular cases, whei^e the breach of the 
second Commandment ends, and that of the first begins. The 
distinction is not, however, for that reason useless; perhaps it is 
even the more useful on that very account, and was for that 
reason preserved, in those two Commandments, of which the 
second serves as a kind of outwork to the first, to guard against 
all gradual approaches to a violation of it — to keep men at a 
distance from infringing the majesty of ' the jealous God.' 
Minds strongly predisposed to superstition, may be compared 
to heavy bodies just balanced on the verge of a precipice. The 
sliglftest touch will send them over, and then, the greatest 
exertion that can be made may be insufficient to arrest their 
fall. 



156 . Of Superstition. [Essay xvii, 

' The one is tmhelief, the other is contumehj ^ and certainly 
superstition is the reproach of the Deity.'' 

Bacon niiglit have said that both are imbelief ; for, he who 
rashly gives heed to superstitions dehisions, errs not from excess 
of faith, but from want of faith ; since what is true in his 
belief, he receives not hecause it is true, — but because it agrees 
with some prejudice or fancy of his own ; and he is right when 
lie is right, only by chance. Having violated the spirit of the 
first Commandment, by regarding what is human with the 
veneration due to that only which is divine, his worship, even 
of the true God, becomes an abomination. ' He has set up 
idols in his heart, and the Lord, the jealous God, will set His 
face against that man.' 

And in reference to this contumely of God, it is a circum- 
stance very remarkable, that, in many instances at least, super- 
stition not only does not promote true religion, but even tends 
to generate profaneness. In proof of the strange mixture of 
superstition and profaneness that leads to the jokes and sallies 
of wit that are frequently heard among the Spanish peasantry, 
even in respect to the very objects of superstitious reverence, 
I can cite the testimony of an eminently competent witness. 
The like strange mixture is found in other Roman Catholic, 
and also in Pagan countries, particularly among the Hindoos, 
who are described as habitually reviling their gods in the 
grossest terms, on the occasion -of any untoward event. And 
in our own country nothing is so common a theme of profane 
jests among the vulgar of all ranks as the Devil ; a large pro- 
portion of the superstition that exists being connected more or 
less with the agenc}^ of Evil Spirits. 

Tliis curious anomaly may perhaps be, in a great measure 
at least, accounted for, from the consideration, that as supersti- 
tion imposes a yoke rather of fear than of love, her votaries ai'e 
glad to tal'e revenge, as it were, when galled by this yoke, and 
to indemnify themselves in some degree both for the irksome- 
ness of their restraints and tasks, and also for the degradation 
(some sense of which is always excited by a consciousness of 
slavish dread), by taking liberties whenever they dare, either 
in the way of insult or of playfulness, with the objects of their 
di-ead. 



Essay xvii.] Annotations. 15T 

But how comes it that they ever do dare, as we see is the 
fact, to take these liberties ? This will perhaps he explained 
by its being a characteristic of superstition to enjoin, and to 
attribute efficacy to, the mere performance of some specific 
outward acts, — the use of some material object, without any 
loyal, afiectionate devotion of heart being required to accompany 
such acts, and to pervade the Avliole life as a ruling motive. 
Hence, the rigid observance of the precise directions given, 
leaves the votary secure, at ease in conscience, and at liberty, 
as well as in a disposition, to indulge in profaneness. In like 
manner a patient, who dares not refuse to swallow a nauseous 
dose, and to confine himself to a strict regimen, yet who is 
both vexed, and somewhat ashamed, at submitting to the 
annoyance, will sometimes take his revenge as it were, by 
abusive ridicule of the medical attendant and his drugs ; 
knowing that this will not, so long as he does but take the 
medicines, diminish their efficacy. Superstitious observances 
are a kind of distasteful or disgusting remedy, which, however, 
is to operate if it be but swallowed, and on which accordingly 
the votary sometimes ventures gladly to revenge himself. Thus 
does superstition generate profaneness. 



^ As the contumely is greater towards God, so the danger is 
greater towards men.'' 



It is somewhat strange that it should be necessaiy to remark 
on the enormity — the noxious character — of all superstition. 
The mischiefs of superstition ai'e, I conceive, much underrated. 
It is by many regarded, not as any sin, but as a mere harmless 
folly, at the worst ; — as, in some instances, an amiable weak- 
ness, or ev^n a salutary delusion. Its votai'ies are pitied, as 
in some cases subjected to needless and painful restraints, 
and undergoing groundless terrors ; — sometimes they are ridi- 
culed as enslaved to absurd and puerile observances : but 
whether pitied or laughed at, superstitious Christians are oflen 
regarded as likely — at least as not the less likely on account 
of their superstition, — to have secured the essentials of religion : 
— as believing and practising what is needful towards salvation, 
and as only carrying their faith and their practice, unneces- 

14: 



158 Of Superstition. [Essay xvii. 

sarilj and unreasonably, to the point of weak credulity and 
foolish scrupulosity. This view of the subject has a strong 
tendency to coniirm the superstitious, and even to add to their 
number. They feel tliat if there is any doubt, they are surely 
on the safe side. ' Supposing I am in error on this or that 
point' (a man may say), ' I am merely doing something super- 
fluous ; at the worst I suffer some temporary inconvenience, 
and perhaps have to encounter some ridicule ; but if the error 
be on the other side, I risk my salvation by embracing it ; my 
present course therefore is evidently the safest — I am, after all, 
on the safe side.' — As if there were any safe side but the side 
of truth ; and as if it could be safe to manifest distrust of a 
Bkilful physician by comhining with his medicines all the nostrums 
of all the ignorant pi'actitioners in the neighbourhood. 

' How far the superstition of any individual may be ex- 
cusable or blameable in the sight of God, can be pronounced by 
Him alone, who alone is able to estimate each man's strength 
or weakness, his opportunities of gaining knowledge, and his 
employment or neglect of those opportunities. ' But the 
same may be said of every other ofience, as well as of those 
in question. Of superstition itself in all its various forms and 
degrees, I cannot think otherwise than that it is not merely a 
folly to be ridiculed, but a mischief to be dreaded ; and that 
its tendency is, in most cases, as far as it extends, destructive 
of true piety. 

' The disposition to reverence some superhuman Power, and 
in some way or other to endeavour to recommend ourselves to 
the favour of that Power, is (more or less in different individuals) 
a natural and original sentiment of the human mind. The 
great Enemy of Man finds it easier in most cases to misdirect, 
than to eradicate this. If an exercise for this religious senti- 
ment can be provided — if this natural craving after divine 
worship (if I may so speak) can be satisfied — by the practice of 
supei"stitious ceremonies, true piety will be much more easily 
extinguished ; the conscience will on this point have been set 
at rest ; God's place in the heart will, as it were, have been 
pre-occupied by an idol ; and that genuine religion wdiicli 
consists in a devotedness of the aft'ections to God, operating on 
the improvement of the moral character, will be hi ore eftectually 
shut out, from the religious feelings of our nature having found 



Essay xvii.] Annotations. 159 

• f 
another vent, and exliausted themselves on vanities of man's 
devising." 

Too religmis, in the proper sense of the word, we cannot be. 
We cannot have the rehgions sentiments and principles too 
strong, or too deeply lixed, if only they have a right object. 
We cannot love God too warmly — or honouf Him too highly — 
or strive to serve Him too earnestly — or trust Him too impli- 
citly ; because our duty is to love Him ' with all our heart, and 
all our soul, and all our mind, and all our strength,^ 

But too religious, in another sense, we may, and are very 
apt to be ; — that is, we are very apt to make for ourselves too 
many objects of religions feeling. 

Now, Almighty God has revealed Himself as the proper 
object of religion — as the one only Power on whom we are to 
feel ourselves continn?illy dependent for all things, and the one 
only Being whose favour we are continually to seek. And, lest 
we should complain that an Infinite Being is an object too 
remote and incomprehensible for our minds to dwell upon. He 
has manifested himself in his Son, the man Jesus Christ, whose 
history and character are largely described to us in the gospels ; 
so that, to love, fear, honour, and serve Jesus Christ, is to love, 
fear, honour, and serve Almighty God ; Jesus Christ being 
'one with the Father,' and 'all the fulness of the Godhead' 
dwelling in Him. 

But as long as our characters are not like God's, and we are 
nn willing to have them made like his, we are naturally averse 
to being brought thus into immediate contact with Him ; and 
we jiflirink from holding (as it were) direct converse, or ' walking 
with' God — from making Him the object towards which our 
thoughts and affections directly turn, and the person to whom 
we come straight in our prayers, and in whose control and 
presence we feel ourselves at all times. Hence, men wish to 
put between themselves and God some other less perfect Beings, 
with whom they can be more familiar, and who (they hope) will 
'let them off' more easily, when they sin, than He would. 

Now, indulging this disposition is not merely adding to true 
rehgion, but destroying, or going near to destroy it. For, when 



Errors of Romanism, 3rd edition, Essay i, § 3, pp. 34-37. 



160 Of Superstition. [Essay xvii. 

• 
we have once made for ourselves such objects of religious feel- 
ings, they are objects so much more suited to our corrupt nature 
than God is, that we soon begin to let llim drop out of our 
minds entirely, whilst the inferior Powers engross all our serious 
worship. Thus the heathens, who began with adding the wor- 
ship of other deiti^ to that of the Supreme, ended with ceasing 
to worship the Supreme at all. Nor does it make so much 
difi'erence, as one might at first suppose, whether we think of 
such inferior Beings as lords, having a direct control over us (as 
the Pagans commonly did), or as only influencing the Supreme 
through their favour with Him ; as the Greeks and Roman- 
catholics commonly profess to think of the glorified saints; 
because he, from whom I expect happiness or misery, becomes 
the uppermost object in my mind, whether he give or only pro- 
cure it. If an agent has such influence with the landlord, that 
the agent's friends are sure of favour, and his foes are sure of 
hard treatment, it is the agent, and not the landlord, that the 
tenants will think most about ; though all his power comes 
really from the landlord. Hence we may see the danger of 
this kind of superstition, by which the heart which should be 
God's {^forestalled, as it were, by other objects. 

' Atheisfn did never pert urh States.^ 

It may perhaps be inferred from this remark that Bacon 
entertained an opinion, held by some, that persons indifterent 
about all religion are the most likely to be tolerant of all, and 
to be averse to persecution and coercion. But this is a mis- 
taken notion. Many persons, indeed, perhaps most, are tole- 
rant or intolerant according to their respective tempers, and not 
according to their principles. But as far as principles are con- 
cerned, certainly the latitudinarian is the more likely to be 
intolerant, and the sincerely conscientious tolerant. A man 
who is careless about religious sincerity may clearly see and 
appreciate the political convenience of religious tiniformity, and 
if he has no religious scruples of his own, he will not be the 
more likely to be tender of the religious scruples of others : if 
he is ready himself to profess what he does not believe, he will 
see no reason why others should not do the same. 

' Ml-. Brydone mentions in his Travels the case of an English- 



Essay xvii.] Annotations. 161 

man who attended mass at a church in Naples through curio- 
sity (which I am far from justifying), and on the elevation of 
the Host, remained standing, while those around knelt: for 
this he was reproved by a gentleman near him, as a violation 
of the rules of delicacy and good breeding, in thus shocking 
the feelings of the congregation : he answered that he did not 
believe in the real presence ; I^o more do Z, 5zV,' was the reply ; 
'and yet you see IkneeV 

' Now, without attempting to vindicate the conduct of the 
Englishman (who was under no compulsion to be present at a 
service in which he scrupled to join), it may be remarked that 
the Neapolitan, or Mr. Brydone, would probably have been 
disposed, if entrusted with the government of any country, to 
compel every one's compliance, in all points, with whatever the 
feelings of the people required ; not only to kneel before the 
Host, but to attend in processions the image of St. Januarius, 
&c., if their omitting it would be likely to give offence. The 
plea of conscientious scruple they would not have understood. 
'I do not believe so and so,' would have been met by the ready 
answer, ' No more do I; and yet I 'kneel.'"- 

' As the Protestant is often inclined to look no further than 
to Romanism for the origin of persecution, so is the Infidel 
to regard Christianity as the chief cause of it. But both are 
mistaken. I am convinced that atheists, should they ever 
become the predominant party, would persecute religion. For 
it is to human nature we must trace both this and many other 
of those evils which each man is usually disposed to attribute 
to the particular system he is opposed to ; and nearly the same 
causes, which generate especial hostility towards those who 
diifer in faith from ourselves, would be found to exist for the 
atheists. They would feel themselves to be regarded by the 
Christians, not indeed as weak and credulous, but as perverse 
and profane : their confidence again in their own persuasion 
would be as likely to be shaken by the Christian, as the Chris- 
tian's, by them : all the human passions, in short, and all the 
views of political expediency, which have ever tempted the 
Christian to persecute, would have a corresponding operation 
with them. 



' Kingdom of Christ, Essay i. § 13, page 59, 4th edition. 

14* 



162 Of Superstition. [Essay xvii. 

' Kot that I conceive most of them to have, themselves, any 
suspicion of this, or to be insincere in their professed abhorrence 
of persecution. As no one wishes to persecute, so, tfisy probably 
do not anticipate (under the above-mentioned supposition) such 
a state of things as would seem to call for coercive measures. 
Tliey imagine, probably, that when they had deprived christian 
ministers of endowments, had publicly proclaimed the falsity of 
the christian faith, and had taken measures for promoting 
education, and circulating books calculated to enlighten the 
people, tlie whole system of religious belief would gradually, 
but speedily, die away, and be regarded in the same light with 
tales of fairies. Such, doubtless, was the notion of some, whom 
I have known to express regret that Buonaparte did not employ 
the power he possessed in conferring so great a benefit on 
society as he might have done, 'by abolishing Christianity.' 
They were thinking, probably of no more active measures 
than the withholding of the support and countenance of govern- 
ment. 

' In such expectations, every one who believes in Christianity 
must feel confident that they would be deceived. At first, 
indeed, appearances probably would be such as to promise 
favourably to their views. For, most of those who profess 
Christianity merely for fashion's sake, or in compliance with 
the laws of their country, would soon fall away ; and would be 
followed by many of such as wanted firmness to support ridi- 
cule, or the disfavour of those in power. But after a time the 
progress of irreligion would be found to have come to a stand. 
When the plants ' on the stony ground' had been all scorched 
up, those ' on the good soil' would be found still flourishing. 
Sincere Christians would remain firm ; and some probably 
would be roused to exert themselves even with increased zeal ; 
and some apostates would be reclaimed. Complaints would 
then be raised, that christian preachers decried, as profane and 
mischievous, the works put forth by authority ; and that they 
represented the rulers as aliens from God, and men whose 
example should be shunned. Those indeed who had imbibed the 
true spirit of the Gospel, would not fail to inculcate, after the 
examjile of the Apostles, the duty of loyal submission, even to 
.cmchristian magistrates; but it is not unlikely that some 



Essay xvii.] Annotations. 163 

would even take a contrarj course, and would thus help to 
bring the im^Jutation of sedition on christian preaching 
universally. 

' The rabble again, would be likely occasionally to assail with 
tumultuous insult and outrage, the Christians ; who would in 
consequence be represented by their enemies as occasioning 
these tumults ; especially if, as is likely, some among them did 
not submit patiently to such usage, or even partly provoked it 
by indiscretion. And however free the generality of the Chris- 
tians might be from any just suspicion of a design to resort to 
lawless violence in the cause of their religion, still it would be 
evident that a revival and renewed diffusion of Christianity, 
such as they were furthering, must, after it should reach a 
certain point, endanger the continuance of power in the hands 
then wielding it ; and that such a change of rulers would put a 
stop to the plans which had been commenced for the ameliora- 
tion of society. Eepresenting then, and regarding Christianity 
as the great obstacle to improvement, as the fruitful source of 
civil dissensions, and as involving disaffection to the then 
existing government, they would see a necessity for actively 
interfering, with a view (not indeed like religious persecutors, 
to the salvation of souls, but) to the secular welfare of their 
subjects, and the security and prosperity of the civil com- 
munity. They would feel themselves accordingly (to say nothing 
of any angry passions that might intrude) bound in duty to 
prohibit the books, the preaching, and the assemblies of Chris- 
tians. Tlie Christians would then, in violation of the law, 
circulate Bibles clandestinely, and hold their assemblies in 
cellars, and on sequestered heaths. Coercion would of course 
become necessary to repress these (as they would then be) 

illegal acts. And next but I need not proceed any 

further ; for I find I have been giving almost an exact descrip- 
tion of the state of things when the christian Churches were 
spreading in the midst of Heathenism. And yet I have only 
been following up the conjectures, which no one (believing in 
Christianity,) could fail to form, who was but tolerably acquainted 
with human nature. For ' such transactions,' says the great 
historian of Greece, ' take place, and always will take place 
(though varied in form, and in degree of violence, by circum- 



164: Of Superstition. [Essay xvii. 

stances), as long as human nature remains tlie same.' ' Never 
can we be secured from the recurrence of the like, but by the 
implantation of some principle which is able to pm-ify, to reno- 
vate, to convert that nature ; in short, to ' create the new 
MAN."" Christianity, often as its name has been blazoned on 
the banners of the persecutor — Cln-istianity, truly underetood, 
as represented in the writings of its foundei-s, and honestly 
applied, furnishes a preventive — the only permanently eflectual 
preventive, — of the spirit of persecution. For, as with fraudu- 
lent, so it is also with coercive, measures, employed in matters 
pertaining to religion : we must not expect that the generality 
will be so far-sighted, as always to perceive their ultimate inex- 
pediency in each particular case that may occur ; they will be 
tempted to regard the peculiar circumstances of this or that 
emergency as constituting an exception to the general rule, and 
calling for a departure from the general principle. Whereas 
the plainest Christian, when he has once ascertained, as he 
easily may, if he honestly consult the Scriptures, what the will 
of God is, in this point, will walk boldly forward in the path of 
his duty, though he may not see at eveiy turn whither it is 
leading him ; and with full faith in the divine wisdom, will 
be ready, in pious confidence, to leave events in the hands of 
Providence.' ^ 

' The master of superstition is the people.'' 

Bacon has here shown that he perceived what is too fre- 
quently overlooked — the real origin of priestcraft. I take leave 
to quote again from the Errors of Romanism. ' We are accus- 
tomed to hear much of priestcraft — of the subtle arts of 
designing men, who imposed on the simplicity of an ignorant 
people, and persuaded them to believe that they, the priests, 
alone understood the nature of the Deity — the proper mode in 
which to propitiate Him — and the mysterious doctrines to which 
the others were to give their implicit assent ; and the poor 
deluded people are represented as prevailed on against their 
better judgment, by the sophistry, and promises, and threats of 
these crafty impostors, to make them the keepers of their con- 



' Thucyd. B. iu. c. 82. " Eph. iv. 24. 

' Essay on ' Persecution,' 3rd series. 



Essay xvii.] Annotations. 165 

gcieuces — their mediators, and substitutes in the service of God, 
and their despotic spiritual rulei-s. 

' Tliere is undoubtedly much truth in such a representation ; 
but it leaves on the mind an erroneous impression, because it is 
(at the utmost) only half the truth. 

^If, indeed, in any comitiy, priests had been Beings of a 
different species — or a distinct caste, as in some of the Pagan 
nations where the priesthood is hereditary ; — if this race had 
been distinguished frpm the people by intellectual superiority 
and moral depravity, and if the people had been sincerely de- 
sirous of knowing, and serving, and obeying God for themselves, 
but had been persuaded by these demons in human form that 
this was impossible, and that the laity must trust them to 
perform what was requisite, in tlieir stead, and submit implicitly 
to their guidance, — then, indeed, there would be ground for 
regarding priestcraft as altogether the work of the priests, and 
in no degree of the people. But we should remember, that in 
every age and country (even where they were, as the Romish 
priests were not, a distinct caste,) priests must have been mere 
men, of like passions with their brethren ; and though some- 
times they might have, on the whole, a considerable intellectual 
superiority, yet it must always have been impossible to delude 
men into the reception of such gross absurdities, if they had not 
found in them a readiness — nay, a craving — for delusion. The 
reply which Is recorded of a Romish priest, is, (not in the sight 
of God indeed, but) as far as regards any complaint on the part 
of the laity, a satisfactory defence ; when taxed with some of 
the monstrous impostures of his Church, his answer was ' The 
people wish to be deceived ; and let them be deceived." Such, 
indeed, was the case of Aaron, and similar the defence he 
offered, for making the Israelites an image, at their desire. Let 
it not be forgotten, that Xhejirst recorded instance of departure 
from purity of worship, as established by the revelation to the 
Israelites, was forced on the p^kst by the people. 

'The truth is, mankind have an innate propensity, as to 
other errors, so, to that of endeavouring to serve God by proxy ; 
— to commit to some distinct Order of men the care of their 
religious concerns, in the same manner as they confide the care 



■ Populus vult decipi, et decipiatur.' 



166 Of Sujperstitioii. [Essaj xvii. 

of their bodily health to the physician, and of their legal 
transactions to the lawyer; deeming it sufficient to follow 
implicitly their directions, without attempting themselves to 
become acquainted with the mysteries of medicine or of law. 
For, Man, except when unusually depraved, retains enough of 
the image of his Maker, to have a natural reverence for reli- 
gion, and a desire that God should be worshipped ; but, through 
the corruption of his nature, his heart is (except when divinely 
purified) too much alienated from God to take delight in 
serving Him. Hence the disposition men have ever shown, to 
substitute the devotion of the priest for their own ; to leave the 
duties of piety in his hands, and to let him serve God in their 
stead. This disposition is not so much the consequence., as 
itself the origin of priestcraft. The Eomish hierarchy did but 
take advantage from time to time of this natural propensity, by 
ingrafting successively on its system such practices and points 
of doctrine as favoured it, and which were naturally converted 
into a source of profit and influence to the priesthood. Hence 
sprung — among other instances of what Bacon calls ' the strata- 
gems of prelates for their own ambition and lucre,' — the gradual 
transformation of the Christian minister — the Presbyter — ^into 
the sacrificing priest, the Hiercus (in Latin, ' sacerdos,^ as the 
Eomanists call theirs) of the Jewish and Pagan religions. 
Hence sprung the doctrine of the necessity of Confession to a 
priest, and of the efficacy of the Penance he enjoins, and of the 
Absolution he bestows. These corruptions crept in one by one ; 
originating for the most part with an ignorant and depraved 
jpeople., but connived at, cherished, consecrated, and successively 
established, by a debased and worldly-minded Ministry ; and 
modified by them just so far as might best favour the views of 
their secular ambition. Tlie system thus gradually compacted, 
was not — ^like Mahometism — the deliberate contrivance of a 
designing impostor. Mahomet did indeed most artfully accom- 
modate his system to Man's nature, but did not wait for the 
gi-adual and spontaneous operations of human nature to produce 
it. He reared at once the standard of proselytism, and im- 
posed on his followers a code of doctrines and laws ready 
framed for their reception. The tree which he planted did 
indeed find a congenial soil ; but he planted it at once with its 
trunk full formed and its branches displayed. The Eomi&b 



rii.] Annotations. 167 

system, on the contrary, rose insensibly, like a young plant 
from the seed, making a progress scarcely perceptible from year 
to year, till at length it had iixed its roots deeply in the soil, 
and spread its baneful shade far around. 

' Infecunda quidem, sed Iseta et fortia surgunt, 
Quippe solo natura subest ;' 

it was the natural offspring of man's frail and corrupt character, 
and it needed no sedulous culture. It had its source in himian 
passions, not checked and regulated by those who ought to have 
been ministers of the Gospel, but who, on the contrary, were 
ever ready to indulge and encourage men's weakness and 
wickedness, pi-ovided they could turn it to their own advantage. 
Tlie good seed ' fell among thorns ;' which being fostered by 
those who should have been occupied in rooting them out, not 
only ' sprang up with it,' but finally choked and overpowered it. 

* In all superstition wise m.en follow fools / and argumeiits are 
fitted to practice in a reverse order.'' 

' It is a mistake, and a very common, and practically not 
unimportant one, to conclude that the origin of each tenet or 
practice is to be found in those arguments or texts which are 
urged in support of it; — that they furnish the cause, on the 
removal of which the effects will cease of course ; and that when 
once those reasonings are exploded, and those texts rightly 
explaiued, all danger is at an end, of falling into similar errors. 

' The fact is, that in a great number of instances, and by no 
means exclusively in questions connected with religion, the 
erroneous belief or practice has arisen first, and the theory has 
been devised afterwards for its support. Into whatever opinions 
or conduct men are led by any human propensities, they seek 
to defend and justify these by the best arguments they can 
frame : and then, assigning (as they often do in perfect sincerity) 
these arguments as the cause of tlieir adopting such notions, 
they misdirect the course of our inquiry ; and thus the chance 
(however small it may be at any rate) of rectifying their eiTors 
is diminished. For if these be in reality traceable to some 
deep-seated principle of our nature, as soon as ever one false 
foundation on which they have been placed is removed, another 
will be substituted ; as soon as one theory is proved untenable, 



168 Of Superstition, [Essay xvii. 

a new one will be devised in its j^lace. Ancl in the mean time, 
we ourselves are apt to be lulled into a false security against 
errors whose real origin is to be sought in the universal pro- 
pensities of human nature. 

' Not only Romanism, but almost every system of supersti- 
tion, in order to be rightly understood, should be (if I may so 
speak) read backwards. To take an instance, in illustration 
of what has been said, from the mythological system of the 
ancients : if we inquire why the rites of sepulture were regarded 
by them as of such vast importance, we are told that, according 
to their system of religious belief, the souls of those whose 
bodies were unburied were doomed to wander disconsolate 
on the banks of the river Styx. Such a tenet, supposing it 
previously established, was undoubtedly well calculated to pro- 
duce or increase the feeling in question ; but it is not much the 
more probable supposition, that the natural anxiety about our 
mortal remains, which has been felt in every Age and Country, 
and which many partake of who are at a loss to explain and 
justify it, drove them to imagine and adopt the theory which 
gave a rational appearance to feelings and practices already 
existing ? 

' And the same principle will apply to the greater part of 
the Romish errors ; the cause assigned for each of them will in 
general be found to be in reality its effect, — the arguments by 
wliich it is supported, to have gained currency from men's par- 
tiality for the conclusion. It is thus that we must explain 
what is at first sight so great a paradox : the vast difference of 
effect apparently produced in minds of no contemptible powers, 
by the same arguments, — the fi-equent inefficacy of the most 
cogent reasonings, — and the hearty satisfaction with which the 
most futile are often listened to and adopted. Nothing is in 
general easier than to convince one who is prepared and 
desirous to be convinced ; or to gain any one's full approbation 
of arguments tending to a conclusion he has already adopted ; 
or to refute triumphantly in his eyes any objections brought 
against what he is unwilling to doubt. An argument which 
shall have made one convert, or even settled one really doubt- 
ing mind, though it is not of course necessarily a sound argu- 
ment, will have accomplished more than one which receives the 



Essay xvii.] Annotations. 169 

unhesitating assent and loud applause of thousands who had 
already embraced, or were predisposed to embrace, the con- 
clusion." 

' It is of great j)i"actical importance to trace, as far as we 
are able, each error to its real source. For instance, if we sup- 
pose the doctrine of Transubstantiation to have in fact arisen 
from the misinterpretation of the text, we shall expect to remove 
the error by showing reasons why the passage should be under- 
stood difterently: — a very reasonable expectation, where the 
doctrine has s])rimg frora the 7nisinter;pretation, but quite other- 
wise where, as in this case, the misinterpretation has sprung from 
the doctrine. And that it has so sprung, besides the intrinsic 
improbability of men being led by the words in question to 
believe in Transubstantiation, we have the additional proof that 
the passage was before the eyes of the whole Christian world 
for ten centuries before the doctrine was thought of. 

'Another exemplification of this principle may be found in 
the origin of the belief in Romish supremacy and infallibility. 
This indeed had been gradually established before it was dis- 
tinctly claimed. Men did not submit to the autlir>rity, because 
they were convinced it was of divine origin, and infallible ; but 
on the contrary, they were convinced of this, because they were 
disposed and accustomed so to submit. The tendency ' to teach 
for doctrines the commandments of men,' and to acquiesce in 
such teaching, is not the effect, but the cause, of their being 
taken for the commandments of God." 

' The causes of superstition are — pleasing and sensual rites and 
ceremo7iies ' 

' Tlie attributing of some sacred efficacy to the performance 
of an outward act, or the presence of some material object, 
without any inward devotion of the heart being required to ac- 
company it, is one of the most prevailing characteristics of super- 
stition. It is at least found, more or less in most species of it. 
The tendency to disjoin religious observances (that is, what are 
intended to be such), from heartfelt and practical religion, is one 
of the most besetting evils of our corrupt nature. Now, no one 



^Errors, of Romanism, 3rd edition, Essay IV. § 2, p. 186-189. 
"" Ibid. pp. 192, 193. 

15 



170 Of Superstition. [Essay xvii. 

can fail to perceive how opposite tins is to true piety. Emptj' 
forms not only supersede piety by standing in its place, but 
gradually alter the habits of the mind, and render it unfit for 
the exercise of genuine pious sentiment. Even the natural 
food of religion (if I may so speak) is thus converted into its 
poison. Our very prayers, for example, and our perusal of the 
holy Scriptures, become superstitious, in proportion as any one 
expects them to operate as a charm — attributing efficacy to the 
mei"e words, while his feelings and thoughts are not occupied in 
what he is doing.' 

'-Every religious ceremony or exercise, however well calcu- 
lated, in itself, to improve the heart, is liable, as I have said, 
thus to degenerate into a mere form, and consequently to 
become superstitious : but in proportion as the outward obser- 
vances are the more complex and operose, and the more unmean- 
ing or unintelligible, the more danger is there of superstitiously 
attaching a sort of magical efiicacy to the bare outward act, 
independent of mental devotion. If, for example, even our 
prayers are liable, without constant watchfulness, to become a 
superstitious form, by our ' honouring God with our lips, while 
our heart is far from Him,' this result is almost unavoidable 
when the prayers are recited in an unknown tougue, and with 
a prescribed number of ' vain repetitions,' crossings, and telling 
of beads. And men of a timorous mind, having once taken up 
a wrong notion of what religion consists in, seek a refuge from 
doubt and anxiety, a substitute for inward piety, and, too often, 
a compensation for an evil life, in an endless multiplication of 
superstitious observances ; — of pilgrimages, sprinklings with 
holy water, veneration of relics, and the like. And hence the 
enormous accumulation of superstitions, which, in the course of 
many centuries, gradually arose in the Romish and Greek 
Churches.' 

But were there no such thing in existence as a corrupt 
church, we are not to suppose that we are safe from supersti- 
tion. Tliere are a great many things which cannot be dis- 
pensed, that, though not superstitious in themselves, may be 
abused into occasions of superstition. Such are the sacraments; 
prayer, pubhc and private ; instructions from the ministers of 



See Essays, (2nd series,) Essay X., on Self-deniaL 



Essay xvii.] Annotations. 171 

the word ; buildings and days set apart, either wholly or partly, 
for these purposes. ' Li a word — where anything, not in itself 
moral or religious, is connected with religion, superstition fastens 
upon that, because it is ' worldly,' and lets the rest go. Thus, when 
God's justice is described in Scripture as vengeance, to show us 
that it pursues the offender as sternly as a revengeful man would 
pursue his enemy, superstition fastens on the thought of God's 
thirsting for revenge, and regards sin only as an offence which 
provokes in God a desire of inflicting pain on somebody. Again, 
when water, or bread and wine, are made signs of the power of 
the Holy Spirit, or of Christ's body and blood sacrificed for us, 
supei-stition fastens on the water, or the bread and wine, as if 
they were the things themselves. When a place must be set 
apart for divine worship, superstition fancies that God dwells 
in that place, rather than in the hearts of »the worshippers. 
When pictures or images of holy persons are set before us, 
superstition fastens on the image as if it w^ere the reality. 
When rites and ceremonies are used to express our devotion, 
superstition makes them our devotion. When prayers have to 
be said, superstition makes the saying them, prayer. When 
good books are to be perused, superetition makes the perusal 
edification. AVhen works are to be done from a good moti've, 
superstition makes the outward action the good works. When 
sufferings for righteousness'' sake are commended, superstition 
takes the suffering for merit ; and so in many other instances. 
It seizes ever on the outward — on that which is not moral ; 
on that which strikes the senses or the imagination — and fastens 
there ; while true religion, on the contrary, calls on us to ' lift 
up our heart' from the earthly to the heavenly, and use the out- 
ward as a help to the ' inward.' " 

' Too great reverence of traditions, over-loading the Church.'' 

It is extraordinary the readiness with which many persons 
acquiesce in tradition, and rest satisfied with an appeal to a 
standard in all respects so vague and uncertain. For, besides 
the uncertainty of traditions which are received in the Church 
of Kome, there is an additional uncertainty to each individual 



' Cautions for the Times, No. V. p. 81. 



173 Of Superstition. [Essay xvii. 

Roman Catholic, whcct are so received. If a man when told, 
'- Such is the tradition of the Church,' should ask, ' how did you. 
learn that V It will be found, by pushing such inquiries, that 
the priest learnt it from a book, which reports that something 
has been reported by one of the ancient fathers as liaving been 
reported to him as believed by those who had heard it reported 
that the Apostles taught it. So that, to found faith on an 
appeal to such tradition, is to base it on the report of a report 
of a report of a report. And, therefore, the discussions one 
sometimes meets with, as to the ' credibility of traditions, 
generally, are as idle as Hume's respecting the credit due to 
testimony . One might as well inquire, ' What degree of regard 
should be paid to books V As common sense w^ould dictate in 
reply, ' ^Yhat book ?' so also ' TrAc>6(^ testimony ? — whcd tradition?' 
As each particular testimony, and each particular book, just so 
should each alleged tradition be examined on its own merits. 

' Tradition is not the interpreter of Scriptm^e, but Scripture 
is the interpreter of tradition. It is foolish to say that tradition 
is to be held to, rather than Scripture, hecmise tradition was 
before Scripture ; since the Scriptures (that is, written records) 
were used on purpose, after traditions had been tried, to guard 
against the uncertainties of mere tradition. Scripture is the 
test ; and yet many defend oral tradition on the ground that we 
have the Scriptures themselves by tradition. Would they think 
that, because they could trust most servants to deliver a letter, 
however long or important, therefore they could trust them to 
deliver its contents in a message by word of mouth ? Take a 
familiar case. A footman brings you a letter from a friend, 
upon whose word you can perfectly rely, giving an account of 
something that has happened to himself, and the exact account 
of which you are greatly concerned to know. While you are 
reading and answering the letter, the footman goes into the 
kitchen, and there gives your cook an account of the same 
thing ; which, he says, he overheard the upper servants at home 
talking over, as related to them by the valet, who said he had it 
from your friend's son's own lips. The cook relates the story to 
your groom, and he, in turn, tells you. Would you judge of 
that story by the letter, or the letter by the story ?" 



Cautions for the Times, 1st edition, No. XI. pp. 20, 21. 



Essay xvii.] Annotations. 173 

"Well might Bacon speak of the ' over-loading' by tradition, 
for it does over-load, whether — according to the pretended dis- 
tinction — it be made co-ordinate with, or subordinate to, Scrip- 
ture. To make these countless traditions the substitute for 
Scripture by ofi'ering them to the people as proofs of doctrine, 
is something like offering to pay a large bill of exchange in 
farthings, which you know, it would be intolerably troublesome 
to count or carry. And tradition when made subordinate to, 
and dependent on. Scripture, is made so much in the same 
way that some parasite plants are dependent on the trees that 
support them. The parasite at first clings to, and rests on, the 
tree, which it gradually overspreads with its own foiiage, till by 
little and little, it weakens and completely smothers it, 

' Miraturque novas frondes, et non sua poma.' 

But, with regard to this distinction attempted to be set up 
between co-ordinate and subordinate tradition, it is to be 
observed, that, ' if any human comment or interpi-etation is to 
be received implicitly and without appeal, it is placed prac- 
tically, as far as relates to everything except a mere question 
of dignity^ on a level with Scripture, Among the Parliamenta- 
rians at the time of the Civil War, there were many — at first a 
great majority — who professed to obey the King's commands, 
as notified to them by Parlimnent, and levied forces in the King's 
name, against his person. If any one admitted Parliament to 
be the sole and authoritative interpreter and expounder of the 
regal commands, and this without any check from any other 
power, it is plain that he virtually admitted the sovereignty of 
that Parhament, just as much as if he had recognized their 
formal deposition of the King,'^ 

' The tahing aim at divine matters hy human.'' 

Tlie desire of prying into mysteries relative to the invisible 
world, but which have no connection with practice, is a charac- 
teristic of human natm-e, and to it may by traced the immense 
mass of presumptuous speculations about things unrevealed, 
respecting God and his designs, and his decrees, 'secret to us," as 
well as all the idle legends of various kinds respecting wonder- 



Kingclom of Christ, 4tli edition, Essay II, § 26, p. 216. " See llth Article. 

15* 



1Y4 Of Superstition. [Essa^ xvii. 

working saints, &c. Tlie sanction afforded to these by pereons who 
did not tliemselves believe them, sprang from a dishonest pnrsnit 
of the expedient rather than the true ; but it is probable that the 
far greater part of sucli idle tales liad not their origin in any deep 
and politic contrivance, but in men's natural passion for what is 
marvellous, and readiness to cater for that passion in each other ; 
• — in the universal fondness of the human mind for speculative 
knowledge respecting things curious and things hidden, rather 
than (what alone the Scriptures supply) practical knowledge 
respecting things which have a reference to our wants. It was 
thus the simplicity of the Gospel was corrupted by ' mixture of 
imaginations.' When the illumination from Heaven — the rays 
of revelation — failed to shed the full light men desired, they 
brought to the dial-plate the lamp of human philosophy. 

' Men think to do hest if they go furthest from the superstition 
fornwrly received; therefore care would he had that the good 
he Qiot taken away with the had.'' 

Tliere is a natui*al tendency to ' mistake reverse of right for 
wrong.' It is not enough, therefore, to act upon the trite 
familiar rule of guarding especially against the error which on. 
each occasion, or in each place, you find men especially liable 
to ; but you must remember, at the same time, this other 
caution, not less important and far more likely to be overlooked 
— to guard against a tendency to a reaction — against the prone- 
ness to rush from one extreme into the opposite. 

One cause of this is, that a painful and odious association is 
sometimes formed in men's minds with anything at all connected 
with that from which they have suffered much ; and thus they 
are led to reject the good and the evil together. This is 
figured in the Tale of a Tuh, by Jack's eagerness to be ' as 
unlike that rogue Peter as possible ;' and he accordingly tears 
off the tail of his coat, and flings it away, because it had been 
overlaid Avitli lace. 

' Since almost every erroneous system contains truth blended 
with falsehood, hence its tendency usually is, first, to recommend 
the falsehood on account of the truth combined with it, and 
afterwards, to bring the truth into contempt or odium on ac- 
count of the intermixture of falsehood. 



Essay xvii.] Annotations. 175 

' In no point is the record of past times more instructive to 
those capable of learning from other experience than their own, 
than in what relates to the history of reactions. 

'It has often been remarked by geographers that a river 
flowing through a level country of soft alluvial soil never keeps 
a straight course, but wdnds regularly to and fro, in the form 
of the letter S many times repeated. And a geographer, on 
looking at the course of any stream as marked on a map, can 
at once tell whether it flows along a plain (like the river Meander 
which has given its name to such windings) or through a rocky 
and hilly country. It is found, indeed, that if a straight 
channel be cut for any stream in a plain consisting of tolerably 
soft soil, it never will long continue straight, unless artificially 
kept so, but becomes crooked, and increases its windings more 
and more every year. The cause is, that any little wearing 
away of the bank in the softest j^art of the soil, on one side, 
occasions a set of the stream against this hollow, which increases 
it, and at the same time drives the water aslant against the 
opposite bank a little loM'^er down. This wears away that bank 
also ; and thus the stream is again driven against a part of the 
first bank, still lower ; and so on, till by the wearing aw^ay of 
the banks at these points on each side, and the deposit of mud 
(gradually becoming dry land) in the comparatively still water 
between them, the course of the stream becomes sinuous, and 
its windings increase more and more. 

' And even thus, in human aftairs, we find alternate move- 
ments, in nearly opposite directions, taking place from time to 
time, and generally bearing some proportion to each other in 
respect of the violence of each ; even as the highest flood-tille is 
succeeded by the lowest ebb. 

' We find — in the case of political affairs, — that the most 
servile submission to privileged classes, and the grossest abuses 
of power by these, have been the precursors of the wildest 
ebullitions of popular fury, — of the overthrow indiscriminately 
of ancient institutions, good and bad, — and of the most turbulent 
democracy ; generally j^roportioned, in its extravagance and 
violence, to the degree of previous oppression and previous 
degradation. And again, we find that whenever men have 
become heartily wearied of licentious anarchy, their eagerness 
has been proportionably great to embrace the opposite extreme 



176 Of Superstition. [Essay xvii. 

of rigorous despotism ; like shipwrecked mariners clinging to a 
bare and rugged rock as a refuge from the waves. 

' And when we look to the history of religious changes, the 
prospect is similar. Tlie formalism, the superstition, and the 
priestcraft which prevailed for so many ages throughout Chris- 
tendom, led, in many instances, by a natural reaction, to the 
■wildest irregularities of fanaticism or profaneness. We find 
antinomian licentiousness in some instances the successor of the 
pretended merit of what were called ' good works ;' in others, 
the rejection altogether of the Christian Sacraments succeeding 
the superstitious abuse of them ; the legitimate claims of every 
\nsible Church utterly disowned by the descendants of those 
who had groaned under a spiritual tyranny; pretensions to 
individual personal inspiration set up by those who had revolted 
from that tyranny ; and in short, every variety of extravagance 
that was most contrasted with the excesses and abuses that had 
before prevailed.' 

Such are the lessons which Keason and wide Experience 
would teach to those who ' have ears to hear,' and which the 
wisest men in various ages have laboured, and generally 
laboured in vain, to inculcate. For all Reason, all Experience, 
and the authority of all the wise, are too often powerless when 
opposed to excited party-spirit. 

We cannot, then, be too much on our guard against re- 
actions, lest we rusli from one fault into another contrary fault. 
We should remember also that all admixture of truth with error 
lias a double danger: some admit both together; others reject 
bolfli. And hence, notliing is harmless that is mistaken either 
for a truth or for a virtue. 

In no point, we may be assm*ed, as our spiritual enemy more 
vigilant. He is ever ready not merely to tempt us witli the 
unmixed poison of known sin, but to corrupt even our food, and 
to taint even our medicine with the venom of his falsehood. 
For religion is the medicine of the soul ; it is the designed and 
appropriate preventive and remedy for the evils of our nature. 
The subtle Tempter well knows that no other allurements to sin 
would be of much avail, if this medicine were assiduously 
applied, and applied in unadulterated purity ; and he knows 
that superstition is the specific poison which may be the most 



Essay xvii.] Annotations. 177 

easily blended with true religion, and whicli will the most com- 
pletely destroy its efficacy. 

It is for lis then to take heed that the ' light which is in us 
be not darkness ;' that our religion be kept pure frbm the 
noxious admixture of superstition ; and it is for us to observe 
the errors of othei'S with a view to our own correction, and to 
our own preservation, instead of contemplating ' the mote that 
is in our brother's eye, while we behold not the beam that is in 
our own eye.' Our conscience, if we carefully regulate, and 
diligently consult it, will be ready, after we have seen and con- 
demned (which is no hard task) the faults of our neighbour, to 
furnish us (where there is need) with that salutary admonition 
whicli the self-blinded King of Israel received from the mouth 
of the Prophet, ' Thou art the man.' 



. ESSAY XVIII. OF TRAVEL. 

^ I TRAVEL, in the younger sort, is a part of education ; in 
-^ the elder, a part of experience. He that travelleth into a 
country before he hath some entrance into tlie language, goeth 
to school, and not to travel. That young men travel under 
some tutor, or grave servant, I allow' well ; so that he be such 
a one that hath the language, and hath been in the country 
before ; whereby he may be able to tell them what things are 
worthy to be seen in the country where they go, what acquaint- 
ances they are to seek, what exercises or discipline the place 
yieldeth ; for else young men shall go hooded, and look abroad 
little. It is a strange thing that, in sea voyages, w^here there 
is nothing to be seen but sky and sea, men should make diaries ; 
but in land-travel, wherein so much is to be observed, for the 
most part they omit it — as if chance were fitter to be registered 
than observation : let diaries, therefore, be brought in use. The 
things to be seen and observed are the courts of princes, espe- 
cially when they give audience to ambassadors ; the courts of 
justice, while they sit and hear causes ; and so of consistories 
ecclesiastic ; the churches and monasteries, with the monuments 
which are therein extant ; the walls and fortifications of cities 
and towns ; and so the havens and harbours, antiquities and 
ruins, libraries, colleges, disputations and lectures, where any 
are ; shipping and navies ; houses and gardens of state and 
pleasure near great cities ; armories, arsenals, magazines, ex- 
changes, burses,Svarehouses, exercises of horsemanship, fencing, 
training of soldiers, and the like : comedies, such whereunto 
the better sort of persons do resort ; treasuries of jewels and 
robes ; cabinets and rarities ; and, to conclude, whatsoever is 
■memorable in the places where they go — after all which, the 
.tutors or servants ought to make diligent inquiry. As for 



* Allow. Approve. 'Tlie Lord aZ^we^A the righteous.' — Psalms. 

" Burse. Exchange ; bourse. (So called from the sign of a purse being anciently 
set over the places -where merchants met.) ' Fraternities and companies I approve 
of, such as merchants* burses.' — Burton. 



xviii.] Of Travel. 179 

triumphs,* masks, feasts, weddings, funercils, capital executions, 
and such shows, men need not be put in mind of them ; yet 
they are not to be neglected. If you will have a young man 
to put his travel into a little room, and in short time to gather 
much, this you must do : first, as was said, he must have some 
entrance into the language before he goeth ; then he must have 
such a servant, or tutor, as knoweth the country, as was like- 
\Vise said; let him carry with him also some card, or book, 
describing the country where he travelleth, which will be a 
good key to his inquiry ; let him keep also a diary ; let him not 
stay long in one city or town, more or less as the place de- 
«erveth, but not long ; nay, when he stayeth in one city or town, 
let him change his lodging from one end and part of the town 
to another, which is a great adamanf of acquaintance ; let him 
sequester himself from the company of his countrymen, and 
diet in such i)laces where there is good company of the nation 
where he travelleth ; let him, upon his removes from one place 
to another, procure recommendation to some person of quality 
residing in the place wdiither he removeth, that he may use his 
favour in those things he desireth to see or know ; thus he may 
abridge his travel with much profit. 

As for the acquaintance which is to be sought in travel, 
that which is most of all profitable, is, acquaintance with the 
secretaries, and employed men of ambassadors ; for so in 
travelling in one country he shall suck the experience of 
many. Let him also see and visit eminent persons in all 
kinds, which are of great name abroad, that he may be able 
to tell how the life agreeth with the fame ; for quarrels, they 
are with care and discretion to be avoided — they are com- 
monly for mistresses, healths, place, and words : and let a man 
beware how he keepeth company with choleric and quarrelsome 
persons, for they will engage him into' their own quarrels. 
When a traveller returneth home, let him not leave the coun- 
tries where he hath travelled altogether behind him, but main- 



' Triumphs. Public shows of any kind. 

' Hold those justs and triumphs.' — Shakespere. 
^ Adamant. For loadstone. 

' You drew me, you hard-hearted adamant.' — Shakespere. 
' Into. In. ' How much more may education induce by custom good habits 
into a reasonable creature.' — Locke. 



180 Of Travel, [Essay xviii. 

tain a correspondence by lettere with those of his acquaintance 
which are of most worth ; and let his travel appear rather in his 
discourse, than in his apparel or gesture; and in his discourse 
let him rather be advised in his answers, than forward to tell 
stories : and let it appear that he doth not change his country 
manners for those of foreign parts, but only prick in some 
flowers of that' he hath learned abroad into the customs of his 
own country. 



ANNOTATIONS. 

' Travel in the yminger sort is apart of eduGaticniy in tlie elder 
aj>art of experience.^ 

The well-known tale for young people, in the Eiienings at 
Ilorne^ of 'Eyes and no Eyes,' might be applied to many 
travellers of opposite habits. 

But there ai'e, moreover, not a few who may be said to be 
' 07ie-&yedi travellers ; who see a great deal of some particular 
class of objects, and are blind to all others. One, for example, 
will have merely the eye of a landscape painter ; anothei', of a 
geologist, or a botanist ; another, of a politician ; and so on. 
And the way in which some men's views are in this way 
limited, is sometimes very whimsical. For instance — A. B. was 
a man of superior intelligence and extensive reading, especially 
in ancient liistory, which was his favourite study. He travelled 
on the Continent, and especially in Italy, with an eager desire 
to verify the localities of celebrated battles and other transac- 
tions recorded by the Greek and Bonian historians : and he suc- 
ceeded admirably in fixing on the exact sj3ot of almost every 
feat performed by Hannibal. And when these researches, in 
each place, were completed, he hurried away without having, or 
seeking, any intercourse with any of i\\Q people now inhabiting 
Italy, or thinking it worth while to make any inquiries as to 
their character and social condition; having set out with the 



'That. WJtat ; that which. See page 64. 



Essay xviii.] Annotations. 181 

conviction that they were, and ever must be, quite unworthy of 
notice ; and liaving, of course, left Italy with the same opinion 
on that point, with which he entered it, knowing as much of its 
inliabitants as of those in the interior of Africa ; only, with the 
difference that, concernino; the latter, he was aware of his own 
ignorance, and had formed no opinion at alL 

And ti"avellers, who do seek tor knowledge on any jDoint, are 
to be warned against hasty induction and rash generalization, 
and consequent presumptuous conclusions. For instance, a 
lady who had passed six weeks in Jamaica, in the house of a 
friend, whom she described as eminently benevolent, and remarh- 
ably kind to his slaves, s^wke with scorn of any one who had 
been in the "West Indies, and who doubted whether slaves were 
always well treated- And Goldsmith, who had travelled on the 
Continent, decided that the higher classes were better off in 
rei3ublics, but the lower classes in absolute monarchies- Had 
lie lived a few jquvs longer he might have seen the French 
populace, goaded to madne,ss by their intense misery under the 
monarchy, rushing into that awful Revolution. 

During the short reign of Louis the Eighteenth, at his first 
restoration, a letter was receiit^ed (by a person who afterwards 
regretted not liaving kejjt it as a curious document) frojn the 
ziephew of one of our then ministers, saying that all tlie tra- 
vellers from France with whom he had conversed agreed in the 
conviction that the Bourbon Government was firmly fixed, and 
was daily gaining strength. The letter was dated on the very 
day that Buonaparte was sailing from Elba ! And in a few 
days after, the Bourbons were expelled w^ithout a struggle. 
Those travellers must surely have belonged to the class of the 
one-eyed- 
It often happens that a man seeks, and obtains, much in- 
tercourse witli the people of the country in which he travels, 
but falls in with only one particular set, whom he takes for 
representatives of the whole nation. Accordingly, to Bacon's 
admonition about pix>curing letters of introduction, we should 
add a caution as to the point of '■from whom V or else the tra- 
veller may be consigned, as it were, to persons of some particular 
party, who will fonoard him to others, of their own party, in 
the next city, and so on through the chief part of Euro])e. And 
two pereons who may have been thus treated, by those of 
16 



182 Of Travel. [Essaj xviif. 

opposite parties, may perhaps return from corresponding tours 
with as opposite impressions of the people of the countries they 
have visited, as the knights in the fable, of whom one had seen 
only the silver side of the shield, and the other only the golden. 
Both will perhaps record quite faithfully all they have seen 
and heard ; and one will have reported a certain nation as full 
of mis.ery and complaint, and ripe for revolt, when the othei 
has found them prosperous, sanguine, and enthusiastically 
loyal. 

In the days when travelling by post-chaise was common, 
there were usually certain lines of iims on all the principal 
roads ; a series of good, and a series of inferior ones, each in 
connexion all the way along ; so that if you once got into the 
worse line, you could not easily get out of it to the journey's, 
end. Tlie ' White Hart' of one town would drive you — almost 
literally — to the ' White Lion' of the next ^ and so on, all the 
way ; so that of two travellers by post from London to Exeter 
or York, the one would have had nothing but bad horses, bad 
dinners, and bad beds, and the other,, very good. Thi& is analo- 
gous to what befalls a traveller in any new country, with respect 
to the impressions he receives, if he falls into the hands of a 
party. They consi^i him, as it were, to those allied with them, 
and pass him on, from one to another, all in the same con- 
nexion, each showing him and telling him, just what suits the. 
party, and. concealing from him everything else. 

This is nowhere more the case than in Ireland ; from a tour 
in which two travellers will sometimes return, each faithfully, 
reporting what he has seen and heard, and having been told 
perhaps nothing more than the truth on any point, but only one 
side of the truth ; and the impressions received will be perhaps., 
quite opposite. The Irish jaunting-car, in which the passengers 
sit back to back, is a sort of type of what befalls many tourists 
in Ireland. Each sees a great deal, and repoi-ts faithfully what 
he has seen, one on one side of the road, and the other on the 
other. One will have seen all that is green^ and the other, all 
that is orange. 

It often, indeed, happens that men place themselves know- 
ingly and wilfully in the hands of a party. But sometimes they 
are, from one cause or another, deluded into it, when they have 
no such thought. This sometimes takes place through the 



Essay xviii.] Annotations. 183 

ambiguity of words. For instance, if the designation by wliicli, 
in some parts of the Continent, Pi-otestants are usually known, 
as distinguished from Romanists, hajjpens to be with us the 
title denoting a certain party in a Protestant Church, a 
foreign Protestant, coming among us, or holding intercourse 
with us, is likely to throw himself into the arms of that party 
whom, from the name, he sujiposes to comprise all who agree 
with him in reliirion. 



ESSAY XIX. OF EMPIKE. 

IT is a miserable state of mind to have few things to desire, 
and many things to fear ; and yet that commonly is the case 
with kings, who being at the highest, want matter of desire, 
which makes their minds more languishing, and have many 
representations of perils and shadows, which make their minds 
the less clear : and this is one reason also of that eifect which 
the Scripture speaketh of, ' That the king's heart is inscrutable ;" 
for multitude of jealousies, and lack of some predominant desire, 
that should marshal and put in order all the rest, maketh any 
man's heart hard to find or sound. Hence it comes likewise, 
that princes many times make themselves desires, and set their 
hearts upon toys ; sometimes upon a building ; sometimes upon 
erecting of an Order ; sometimes upon the advancing of a 
person ; sometimes upon obtaining excellency in some art, or 
feat of the hand — as Nero for playing on the harp ; Domitian 
for certainty of the hand with the arrow ; Commodus for play- 
ing at fence ; Caracalla for driving chariots ; and the like. This 
seemeth incredible unto those that know not the principle, that 
the mind of man is more cheered and refreshed by profiting in 
small things, than by standing at a stay^ in great. We see also 
that kings that have been fortunate conquerors in their first 
years, it being not possible for them to go forward infinitely, 
but that they must have some check or arrest in their fortunes, 
turn in their latter years to be superstitious and melancholy ; as 
did Alexander the Great, Dioclesian, and in our memory 
Charles Y., and others ; for he that is used to go forward, and 
findeth a stop, falleth out of his own favour, and is not the 
thing he was. 

To speak now of the true temper' of empire, it is a thing 
rare and hard to keep, for both temper and distemper consist 
of contraries ; but it is one thing to mingle contraries, another 



• Prm. XXV. 3. 

* Stand at a stay. To stand still ; not to advance. ' Affairs of state seemed 
rather to sta^id at a stay than to advance or decline.' — Hayward. 

^ Temper. Due balance of qualities. ' Health itself is but a kind of temper, 
gotten and preserved by a convenient mixture of contrarieties.' — Arbuthnot. 
' Between two blades, which bears the better temper ? — Shakespere. 



Essay xix.] Of Empire. 185 

to interchange them. The answer of Apollonius to Vespasian 
is full of excellent instruction. Yespasian asked him, ' AVhat 
was Nero's overthrow ?' He answered, ' Nero could touch and 
tune the harp well, but in government sometimes he used to 
wind the pins too high, sometimes to let them down too low ;" 
and certain it is, that nothing destroyeth authority so much as 
the unequal and untimely interchange, of power pressed too far, 
and relaxed too much. 

Tliis is true, that the wisdom of all these latter times in princes' 
affairs, is rather fine deliveries, and shiftings of dangers and 
mischiefs, when they are near, than solid and grounded courses 
to keep them aloof; but this is but to try masteries with for- 
tune ; and let men beware how they neglect and sufler matter 
of trouble to be prepared ; for no man can forbid the spark, nor 
tell whence it may come. The difficulties in princes' business 
are many and great, but the greatest difficulty is often in their 
own mind ; for it is common with princes (saith Tacitus) to will 
contradictories : ' Sunt plerumque regum voluntates vehementes, 
et inter se contrarise." For it is the solecism of power to think 
to command the end, and yet not to endure the mean.^ 

Kings have to deal with their neighbours, their wives, their 
children, their prelates or clergy, their nobles, their second 
nobles or gentlemen, their merchants, their commons, and their 
men of war ;* and from all these arise dangers, if care and cir- 
cumspection be not used. 

First, for their neighbours, there can no general rule be 
given (the occasions are so variable), save one wdiich ever 
holdeth — which is, that princes do keep due sentinel, that none 
of their neighbours do overgrow so (by increase of territory, by 
embracing of trade, by approaches, or the like,) as^ they become 
more able to annoy them than they were ; and this is generally 
the work of standing councils to foresee and to hinder it. 
During that triumvirate of kings. King Heniy YIU. of England, 

» Philost. Vit. Apoll. Tyan. v. 28. 

^ The -will of kings is, for the most part, vehement and inconsistent.' — Sallust, 
B. J. 113. (Not Tacitus.) 

"^ Mean. Means. 'The virtuous conversation of Christians was a mean to -work 
the conversion of the heatlien to Christ.' — Hooker. 

* Men of war (now only applied to ships.) Warriors; soldiers. 'And Saul set 
him over the men of war.' — 1 Sam. xviii. 6. 

* As, That. See page 23. 

16* 



186 Of Errupire. [Essaj xix. 

Francis I., king of France, and Charles Y., emperor, there was 
such a watch kept that none of the three could win a palm' of 
ground, but the other two would straightways' balance it, either 
by confederation, or, if need were, by a war, and would not in 
any wise take up peace at interest ; and the like was done by 
that league (which Guicciardine saith was the security of Italy,) 
made between Ferdinando, king of Naples, Loreuzius Medices, 
and Ludovicus Sforsa, potentates, the one of Florence, the other 
of Milan. Neither is the opinion of some of the schoolmen to 
be received, that a war cannot justly be made, but upon a pre- 
cedent^ hijury or provocation ; for there is no question but a 
just fear of an imminent danger, though there be no blow 
given, is a lawful cause of war. 

For their wives, there are cruel examples of them. Livia 
is infamed* for the poisoning of her husband ; Roxolana, Soly- 
man's wife, was the destruction of that renowned jDrince, Sultan 
Mustapha, and otherwise troubled his house and succession; 
Edward II. of England's queen had the principal hand in the 
deposing and murder of her husband. This kind of danger is 
then to be feared chiefly when the wives have plots for the 
raising of their own children, or else that they be advoutresses.^ 

For their children, the tragedies likewise of dangers from 
them have been many ; and generally the entering of the 
fathei-s into suspicion of their children hath been ever unfor- 
tunate. The destruction of Mustapha (that we named before) 
M'as so fatal to Solyman's line, as the succession of the Turks 
from Solyman until this day is suspected to be untrue, and of 
strange blood, for that Selymus II. was thought to be supposi- 



® Palm. Hand^s breadth. ' The jja/w, or hand's breadth, is a twenty-fourth part 
of the stature.' — Holder. 

* Slraightways. Immediately. 

' Like to a ship that having 'scap'd a tempest, 
Is straightway claim'd and boarded with a pirate.' — Shakespere. 

* Precedent. Preceding. 

' Do it at once. 
Or thy precedent services are all 
But accidents unpurposed.' — Shakexpere. 

* Infaraed. Infamous. ' Whosoever for any offence be infamed, by their ears 
hang rings of gold.' — Sir T. More. 

' Advoutress. Adulteress. (So called from breach of the marriage-vow.) 
' In advoutry 
God's commandments break.' — Song, 1550. 



Essay xix.] Of Emjpire. 187 

titioiis. Tlie destruction of Crispns, a young prince of rare 
towardness/ by ■Constantinus the Great, his father, was in like 
manner fatal to his house, for both Constantinus and Constance, 
his sons, died violent deaths ; and Constantius, his other son, 
did little better, who died indeed of sickness, but after that 
Julianus had taken arms against him. The destruction of 
Demetrius, son to Philip II. of Macedon, turned upon the 
father, who died of repentance : and many like examples there 
are, but few or uQue where the fathers had good by such dis- 
trust, except it were where the sons were in open arms against 
them, as was Selymus I. against Bajazet, and the three sons of 
Henry II., king of England. 

For their prelates, when they are proud and great, there is 
also danger from them ; as it was in the times of Anselmus and 
Thomas Beckett, archbishops of Canterbury, who, with their 
crosiers, did almost try it with the king's sword ; and yet they 
had to deal with stout and haughty kings — "William Eufus, 
Henry I., and Ilenry 11, The danger is not from that estate,' 
but where it hath a dependence of foreign authority, or where 
the churchmen come in and are elected, not by the collation of 
the king, or particular patrons, but by the people. 

For their nobles, to keep them at a distance, it is not amiss ; 
but to depress them may make a king more absolute, but less 
safe, and less able to perform anything that he desires. I have 
noted it in my history of Ejng Henry YH, of England, who 
depressed his nobility, whereupon it came to pass, that his times 
were full of difficulties and troubles ; for the nobility, though 
they continued loyal unto him, yet did they not co-operate with 
him in his business — so that in effect he was fain^ to do all 
things himself. 

For their second nobles, there is not much danger from them, 
being a body dispersed : they may sometimes discourse high 
but that doth little hurt ; besides, they are a counterpoise to 
the higher nobility, that they grow not too potent ; and, lastly, 



' Towardness. Docility. ' He proved in his youth a personage of great toward- 
ness, and such as no small hope of him was conceived.' — Holinshed. 

* Estate. Order of men. ' All the estate of the elders.' — Acts xxii. 5. 

^ Fain. Compelled; constrained. 'Whosoever will hear, he shall find God; 
whosoever will study to know, shall be also/awi to believe.' — Hooker. 
' I was fain to forswear it.' — Shakespere. 



188 Of Emjpire. [Essay xix. 

being the most immediate in authority with the common 
people, they do best temper popular commotiops. 

For their merchants, they are vena porta ^ and if they flourish 
not, a kingdom may have good limbs, but will have empty veins, 
and nourish little. Taxes and imposts upon them do seldom 
good to the king's revenue, for that which he wins in the hun- 
dred'' he loseth in the shire : the particular rates being increased, 
but the total bulk of trading rather decreased. 

For their commons, there is little danger from them, except 
it be where they have great and potent heads, or where you 
meddle with the point of religion, or their customs, or means 
of lite. 

For their men of war, it is a dangerous state where they live 
and remain in a Body, and are used to donatives, whereof we 
see examples in the janizaries and pretorian bands of Kome ; but 
trainings of men, and arming them in several places, and under 
several commanders, and without donatives, are things of de- 
fence, and no danger. 

Princes are like to heavenly bodies, which cause good or evil 
times ; and which have much veneration, but no rest. All 
precepts concerning kings are in eftVct comprehended in those 
two remembrances :^ ' Memento quod es homo,' and ' Memento 
quod es Deus,' or ' vice Dei' — the one bridleth their power, and 
the other their will. 

AXTITHETA ON EMPIRE. 

Pro. Contra. 

' Felicitate fi-ui, magnum bonum est ; ' Quam misei'um, liabere nil fere, 

aed earn et aliis impertiri posse, adhuc quod appetas ; infinita, qua; metuas. 
majus. ^ How wretched is he who has hardly 

' I'o enjoy happiness is a great good; anything to hope, and many things to 

but to be able to confer it also on others fear.' 
is a greater still.' 



' ' Tlie great vein of the bod}\' 

^Hundred. A division of a county. 'Lands taken from tlie enemy were 
di\'ided into centuries or hundreds, and distributed amongst the soldiers.' — 
Arbuth7iof. 

^ ' Remember that thou art man,' and ' Remember that thou art God — or God's 
viee-gerent.' 



ESSAY XX. OF COUNSEL. 

THE greatest trust between man and man, is the trust of 
giving counsel ; for in other confidences men commit the 
parts of hfe, their lands, their goods, their children, their 
credit, some particular affair ; but to such as they make their 
counsellors they commit the whole — hj how much the more 
they are obliged to all faith and integrity. The wisest princes 
need not think it any diminution to their greatness, or deroga- 
tion to their sufficiency, to rely upon counsel. God himself is 
not without, but hath made it one of the great names of the 
blessed Son, the 'Counsellor," Solomon hath pronounced that 
'in counsel is stability.'* Tilings will have their first or second 
agitation ; if they be not tossed upon the arguments of counsel, 
they will be tossed upon the waves of fortune, and be full of 
inconstancy, doing and undoing, like the reeling of a drunken 
man. Solomon's son found the force of counsel, as his father 
saw the necessity of it : for the beloved kingdom of God was 
first rent and broken by ill counsel — upon which counsel there 
are set for our instruction the two marks whereby bad counsel 
is for ever best discerned, that it was young counsel for the 
persons, and violent counsel for the matter. 

The ancient times do set forth in figure both the incorpora- 
tion and inseparable conjunction of counsel with Kings, and 
the wise and politic use of counsel by Kings ; the one, in that 
they say Jupiter did marry Metis, which signifieth counsel, 
whereby they intend that sovereignty is married to counsel ; the 
other in that which followeth, which was thus : — ^they say, after 
Jupiter was married to Metis, she conceived by him and was 
with child, but Jupiter suffered her not to stay till she brought 
forth, but ate her up, whereby he became himself with child, 
and was delivered of Pallas armed out of his head.^ Which 
monstrous fable containeth a secret of empire how kings are to 
make use of their counsel of state — ^that first, they ought to 
refer matters unto. them, which is the first begetting or impreg- 
nation : but when they are elaborate, moulded, and shaped in 



Isaiah ix. 6. ^ Prov. xx. 18. « Hesiod. Theog. 886. 



190 Of Counsel. [Essay xx. 

the womb of their council, and grow ripe and ready to be 
brought forth, that then tliey sutfer not their council to go 
through with the resolution' and direction, as if it depended on 
them, but take the matter back into their own hands, and make 
it appear to the world, that the decrees and final directions 
(which, because they come forth with prudence and power, are 
resembled to Pallas armed) proceeded from themselves, and not 
only from their authority, but (the more to add reputation to 
themselves) from their head and device. 

Let us now speak of the inconveniences of counsel, and 
of the remedies. The inconveniences that have been noted 
in calling and using counsel, are three : — first the re- 
vealing of aftairs, whereby they become less secret ; secondly, 
the weakening of the authority of princes, as if they were 
less of themselves ; thirdly, tlie danger of being unfaith- 
fully counselled, and more for the good of them that counsel, 
than of him that is counselled — for which inconveniences, the 
doctrine of Italy, and practice of France, in some kings' times, 
had introduced cabinet councils — a remedy worse than the 
disease. 

As to secrecy, princes are not bound to communicate all 
matters with all counsellors, but may extract and select — 
neither is it necessary, that he that consulteth what he should 
do, should declare M'hat he will do ; but let princes beware that 
the uiLsecreting'' of their affairs comes not from themselves : and 
as for cabinet councils, it may be their motto, ' Plenus rimarum 
sum." One futile* person, that maketh it his glory to tell, will 
do more hurt than many that know it their duty to conceal. It 
is true there be some aifaii's which require extreme secrecy, 
which will hardly go beyond one or two persons besides the 
king — neither are those counsels unprosperous, — ^tbr, besides the 



■ Eesolution. Final decision. 

' V the progress of this business, 
Ere a determinate resolution, 
The bishops did require a respite.' — Shakespere. 

* Unsecreting. The disclosing; the divulging. Shakespere has the adjective 
'unsecret:' 

' Why liave I blabbed ? Who should be true to us 
When we are so unsecret to ourselves ?' — Shakespere. 
"Full of chinks am I.'— Ter. Eun. 1. 11, 25. 

* Futile. Talkative. See page 64. 



Essay xx.] Of Counsel. 191 

secrecy, they commonly go on constantly in one spirit of direc- 
tion without distraction ; but then it must be a prudent king, 
such as is able to grind with a hand-mill — and those inward' 
counsellors had need also be wise men, and especially true and 
trusty to the king's ends, as it was with King Henry VII. of 
England, who in his greatest business imparted himself to none, 
except it were to Morton and Fox. 

For weakness of authority the fable showeth the remedy — 
nay, the majesty of kings is rather exalted than diminished 
when they are in the chair of council, — neither was there ever 
prince bereaved of his dependencies by his council, except where 
there hath been either an over-greatness in one counsellor, or 
an over-strict combination in divers,^ which are tilings soon 
found and holpen.^ 

For the last inconvenience, that men will counsel with an 
eye to themselves ; certainly, ' Non inveniet fidem super ter- 
ram,'* is meant of the nature of times, and not of all particular 
persons. There be that are in nature faithful and sincere, and 
plain and direct, not crafty and involved — let princes, above all, 
draw to themselves such natures. Besides, counsellors are not 
commonly so united but that one counsellor keepetli sentinel 
over another ; so that if any counsel out of faction or private 
ends, it commonly comes to the king's ear : but the best remedy 
is, if i^rinces know their counsellors, as well as their counsellors 
know them : — 

' Prineipis est virtus maxima nosse suos.'° 

And on the other side, counsellors should not be too specula- 
tive into their sovereign's person. The true composition of a 
counsellor is, rather to be skilful in their master's business than 
in his nature ; for then he is like to advise him, and not to feed 
his humour. It is of singular use to princes if they take the 
opinions of their council both separately and together ; for pri- 
vate opinion is more free, but opinion before others is more 
reverend. In private, men are more bold in their own humours, 



* Inward. Intimate. 'AH my inward friends abhorred me.' — Joh. xLs. 19. 

* Divers. Several ; su7idry. 

'Divers new opinions, diverse and dangerous.' — Shakespcre. 

* Holpen. Helped. ' They shall be holpen with a little help.' — Dan. xi. 34. 

* 'He will not find faith upon the earth.' — Luke xviii. 18. 

* 'The greatest virtue of a prince is to know his man.' 



192 Of Counsel. [Essay xx. 

and, in consort,' men are more obnoxious to others' humours, 
therefore it is good to take both — and of the inferior sort, 
rather in private to preserve freedom, — of the greater, rather in 
consort to preserve respect. It is in vain for princes to take 
counsel concerning matters, if they take no counsel likewise _ 
concerning persons — for all matters are as dead images, and 
the life of the execution of affairs resteth in the good choice of 
persons ; neither is it enough to consult concerning persons, 
' secundum genera," as in an idea of mathematical description, 
what the kind and character of the person should be ; for the 
greatest errors are committed, and the most judgment is shown, 
in the choice of individuals. It was truly said, ' Optimi con- 
siliarii mortui'" — ' Books will speak plain when counsellors 
blanch,' therefore it is good to be conversant in them, specially 
the books of such as themselves have been the actors uj^on the 
stage. 

The councils at this day in most places are but familiar 
meetings, where matters are rather talked on than debated; 
and they run too swift to the order or act of council. It w^ere 
better that, in causes of weight, the matter were propounded 
one day, and not spoken to till next day, ' in nocte consilium ;'* 
so was it done in the commission of union between England 
and Scotland, which was a grave and orderly assembly. I 
commend set days for petitions ; for both it gives the suitors 
more certainty for their attendance and it frees the meetings 
for matters of estate,* that they may ' hoc agere.'° In choice 
of committees for ripening business for the council, it is better 
to chuse inditferent' persons, than to make an indiflferency by 
putting in those that are strong on both sides. I commend 
also standing commissions ; as for trade, for treasure, for war, 

* Consort. Assemhhj ; council. 

' In one consort there sat, 
Cruel Revenge, and rancorous Despite, 
Disloyal Treason, and heart-burning Hate.' — Spenser. 
" According to their kinds. ' ' The dead are the best counsellors.' 

* In night is counsel. 

^ Matters of estate. Public Affairs. ' I hear her talk of matters of estate, and 
the Senate.' — Ben Jonson. 

* Do this one thing. 

' Indiiferent. Neutral ; not inclined to one side more than another. 
' Cato knows neither of them. 
Indifferent in his choice to sleep or die.' — Addismi. 



EsScay XX.] Annotations. 193 

for suits, for some provinces ; for where tliere be divers par- 
ticular councils, and but one council of estate (as it is in Spain,) 
thej are, in effect, no more than standing commissions, save' 
that they have greater authority. Let such as are to inform 
councils out of their particular ^professions (as lawyers, seamen, 
mintmen," and the like,) be first heard before committees, and 
then, as occasion serves, before the council ; and let them not 
come in multitudes, or in a tribunitious manner, for that is to 
clamour^ councils, not to inform them. A long table and a 
square table, or seats about the walls, seem things of form, but 
are things of substance ; for at a long table, a few at the upper 
end, in effect, sway all the business; but in the other form 
there is more use of the counsellors' opinions that sit lower. 
A king, when he presides in council, let him beware how he 
opens his own inclination too much in that which he pro- 
poundeth ; for else counsellors will but take the wind of him, 
and instead of giving free counsel, will sing him a song of 
^ placebo.'* 



ANNOTATIONS. 

* It is better to chuse indifferent jpersons.^ than to make an in- 
diferency hj putting in those that are st/rong on hoth sides."* 

Bacon is here speaking of committees ; but there is, in refe- 
rence to all legislative assemblies a very general apprehension 
of a complete preponderance of some extreme party ; which 
arises, I conceive, from not taking into account the influence 
which, in every assembly, and every society, is always exercised 
(except in some few cases of very extraordinary excitement, 



' Save. Except. ' Of the Jews five times received I fortj- sti-ipes, save one.' — 
2 Cor. xi. 

"^ Mintman. Skilled in coinage. ' He that thinketh Spain to be some great 
overmatch for this estate, is no good mintman, but takes greatness of kingdoms 
according to their bulk and currency, and not after their intrinsic vahie.' — Bacon's 
TFaj* with Spain. 

' Clamour. To stun with noise. (Rarely used as an active verb.) 
' Clamour your tongues.' — Shalcespere. 

* Placebo. I will please. Used to denote anything soothing. 

17 N 



194: Of Counsel. [Essay xx. 

and almost of temporary disorganization) by tliose wlio are in 
a minority. On this subject I take leave to extract a passage 
from Tlie Kingdom of ChnsV 

' It might appear at first sight — and such is usually the ex- 
pectation of a child of ordinary intelligence, and of all those 
who are deficient in an intelligent study of history, or obsei-va- 
tion of what is passing in the world — that whatever party 
might in any meeting or in any community, obtain a majoi'ity, 
or in whatever other way, a sujperiority ., would be certain to 
carry out their own principles to the utmost, with a total dis- 
regard of all the rest; so that in a senate for instance, con- 
sisting, suppose, of 100 members, a majority, whether of 51 to 
49, or of 70 to 30, or of 95 to 5, would proceed in all respects 
as if the others had no existence : and that no mutual con- 
cessions or compromises could take place except between parties 
exactly balanced. In like manner a person wholly ignorant 
of Mechanics might suppose that a body acted on by several 
unequal forces in different directions would obey altogether the 
strongest, and would move in the direction of that ; instead of 
moving, as we know it ordinarily does, in a direction not coin- 
ciding with any one of them. 

' And experience shows that in human affairs as well as in 
Mechanics, such expectations are not well founded. If no 
tolerably wise and good measures were ever carried except in 
an assembly where there was a complete predominance of men 
sufiiciently enlightened and public-spirited to have a decided 
preference for those measures above all others, the world would, 
I conceive, be much worse governed than it really is. 

'No doubt, the larger the proportion of judicious and pat- 
riotic individuals, the better for the community ; but it seems 
to I)e the aj)pointmnnt of Providence that the prejudices, and 
passions, and interests of different men should be so various as 
not only to keep one another somewhat in check, but often to 
bring about, or greatly help to bring about, mixed results, often 
far preferable to anything devised or aimed at by any of the 
parties. 

' The British Constitution, for instance, no intelligent reader 



' Kingdom of Christ. 4th edition, Appendix to Essay ii. note 0, pp 348, 349, 
:851, 352. 



Essay xx.] Annotations. 195 

of history would regard as wholly or chiefly the work of men 
fully sensible of the advantages of a government so mixed and 
balanced. It was in great measure the result of the efforts, 
partially neutralizing each other, of men who leaned, more or 
less, some of them towards pure Monarchy, and othei-s towards 
Republicanism. And again, though no one can doubt how 
great an advance (it is as yet only an advance) of the principle 
of religious toleration, and of making a final appeal to Scripture 
alone, is due to the Reformation, yet the Reformers were slow 
in embracing these principles. They were at fii-st nearly as 
much disposed as their opponents to force their own interpreta- 
tions of Scripture on every one, and to call in the magistrate 
to suppress heresy by force. But not being able to agree 
among themselves %ohose interpretation of Scripture should be 
received as authoritative, and who should be entrusted with the 
sword that was to extirpate heresy, compromises and mutual 
concessions gradually led more and more to the practical 
adoption of principles whose theoretical truth and justice is, 
even yet, not universally perceived. 

' And similar instances may be found in every part of history. 
"Without entering into a detailed examination" of the particular 
mode in which, on each occasion, a superior party is influenced 
by those opposed to them — either from reluctance to drive them 
to desperation, or otherwise, — certain it is, that, looking only to 
the results, — the practical working of any government, — in the 
long run, and in the general course of measures, — we do find 
something corresponding to the composition of forces in Me- 
chanics ; and we find oftener than not, that the coui-se actually 
pursued is better (however faulty) than could have been cal- 
culated from the character of the greater part of those who 
administer the government. The wisest and most moderate, 
even when they form but a small minority, are often enabled 
amidst the conflict of those in opposite extremes, to bring about 
decisions, less wise and just indeed than they themselves would 
have desired, but far better than those of either of the extreme 
parties. 

' Of course we are not to expect the same exact uniformity of 
effects in human affairs as in Mechanics. It is not meant that 
each decision of every Assembly or Body of men will necessarily 
be the precise ' resultant' (as it is called in Natural Philosophy) 



196 Of Counsel. [Essay xx. 

of the several forces operating, — the various parties existing. in 
the Assembly. Some one or two votes will occasionally be 
passed, by a majority — ^perhaps by no very large majority, — in 
litter defiance of the sentiments of the rest. But in the long 
run — in any course of enactments or proceedings, — some degree 
of influence will seldom fail to be exercised by those who are in 
a minority. Tliis influence, again, will not always correspond, 
in kind, and in degree, with what takes place in Mechanics. 
For instance, in the material world, the impulses whicli keep a 
body motionless must be exactly opposite, and exactly halanced ; 
but in human afiairs, it will often happen that there may be a 
considerable majority in favour of taking some step, or making 
some enactment, yet a disagreement as to some details will give 
a preponderance to a smaller party who are against a^iy such 
step. When the majority, for example, of a garrison are dis- 
posed to make an attack on the besiegers, but are not agreed 
as to the time and mode of it, the decision may be on the side 
of a minority who deem it better to remain on the defensive. 
Accordingly, it is matter of common remark that a ' Council of 
War' rarely ends in a resolution to fight a battle. 

' The results of this cause are sometimes evil, and sometimes 
— ^j3erhaps more frequently— good. Many troublesome and per- 
nicious restrictions and enactments, as well as some beneficial 
ones, are in this way prevented. 

'And again the delay and discussion which ensue when 
powerful parties are at all nearly balanced, aflford an opening 
for arguments : and this, on the whole, and in the long run, 
gives an advantage (more or less, according to the state of 
intellectual culture and civilization) to the most wise and 
moderate, — in short, to those (even though but a small portion, 
numerically, of the assembly) who have the best arguments on 
their side. Some, in each of the opposed parties, may thus be 
influenced by reason, who would not have waited to listen to 
reason, but for the check they receive from each other. And 
thus it wull sometimes happen that a result may ensue even 
better than could have been calculated from the mere mechanical 
computation of the acting forces.' 

The above views are the more important, because any one 
who does not embrace them, wnll be likely, on contemplating 
any wise institution or enactment of former times, to be thrown 



Essay xx.] Annotations. 197 

into indolent despondency, if lie find, as lie often will, tliat the 
majority of those aronnd lis do not seem to come np to the 
standard which those institutions and enactments appear to 
him to imply. He takes for granted that the whole, or the 
chief j)art, of the members of those assemblies, rfcc, in which 
such and such measures were carried, must have been men of a 
corresponding degree of good sense, and moderation, and public 
spirit : and perceiving (tis he thinks) that an assembly of such 
anen could not now be found, he concludes tliat wisdom and 
goodness (in governments at least) must have died with our 
ancestors ; or at least that no good is at pu'eMnt to be hoped 
from any government. And yet perhaps the truth will be that 
the greater part of the very assemblias whose measures he is 
admiring may have consisted of men of several parties, each of 
which would, if left entirely to itself have made a mucli worse 
decision than the one actually adopted ; and that one may have 
been such, as, though not actually to coincide with, 3^et most 
nearly to approach to the opinions of the wisest iind best 
members of the assembly, though those may have been but a 
small minoritj^ And it may be therefore, that he may have 
around him the materials of an assembly not at all inferior in 
probity or intelligence to that which he is contemplating with 
despairing admiration. 

^ A king ^ when he presides in council ' 



It is remarkable how a change of very great importance in 
our system of government was brought about by pure accident. 
Tlie custom of the king's being pi'esent in a cabinet council of 
his ministers, which was the obvious, and had always been the 
usual state of things, was jjut an end to when the Hanoverian 
princes came to the throne, from their ignorance of the English 
language. The advantage thence resulting of ministers laying 
before the sovereign the result of their full and free delibera- 
tions — an advantage not at all originally contemplated, — caused 
the custom to be continued, and so estabrished that it is most 
unlikely it should ever be changed. 
IT* 



ESSAY XXL OF DELAYS. 



FOETUXE is like the market, wliere, many times, if you can 
stay a little, the price will fall ; and again, it is sometimes 
like Sibylla's' offer,, which at first offereth the commodity at 
full, then consumeth part and part^ and still holdeth up the 
price; for occasion (as it is in the common verse) turneth a 
bald noddle after she hath presented her locks in front, and na 
hold taken ; or,, at least, turneth the handle of the bottle first 
to be received, and after the belly,* which is hard to clasp.* 
There is surely no greater wisdom than well to time the begin- 
nings and onsets of tilings. Dangers are na more light, if they 
once seem light ; and more dangers have deceived men than 
forced them : nay, it were better to meet som.e dangers half 
way, though they come nothing near, than to keep too long a 
watch upon their approaches ; for if a man watch too long, it 
is odds he will fall asleep. On the other side, to be deceived 
with too long shadows (as some have been when the moon was 
low> and shone on their enemies' backs), and so to shoot off 
before the time, or to teach dangers to come on, by over-earlj 
buckling* towards them, is another extreme. Tlie ripeness or 
unripeness of the occasion (as we said) must ever be well 
weighed ; and generally it is good to commit the beginnings of 
all great actions to Argus with his hundred Gjes, and the ends 
to Briareus with his hundred hands — first to watch, and then 
to speed ; for the helmet of Pluto,^' which raaketh the politic 
man go invisible, is secrecy in the counsel, and celerity in the 
execution ;, for when things are once come to the execution, 
there is no secrecy comparable to celerity — like the motion of 
a bullet in the air, which flieth so swift as it outrmis the eye. 



' Sibylla, ne Sibyl. 

" Belly. That protuberance or camty of anytMnff rescmblin'g the human belly, 
' An Irish harp hath the concave, or belly, at the end of the strings.' — Bacon, 
Nat. Hist. * Phsed. viii. 

* Buckle. To go ; to hasten towards. 

' Soon he buckled to the field.' — /Spenser. 

* Homer. 11. v. 845. 



Essay xxi.] Annotations. 199 



ANTITIIETA ON DELAYS. 

Pbo. Contra, 

' Fortuna multa festinanti vendit, ' Occasio, instar Sibylla, minuit obla- 

quibus morantem donat. turn, pretium auget. 

' Fortune often sells to the hasty ' Opportunity, like the Sibyl, dimi- 

aahat she gives to those who loait.' nishes Iter offering, and increases her 



pr 



ice, at each visit.' 

' Celeritas, Orel galea. 

' Speed is the helmet of Pluto.' 



ANNOTATIONS. 

This matter of ' Delays' is most emphatically one in which, 
as Sir Koger de Coverley might have decided, much may be said 
on both sides. The rules which Bacon does give are very good ; 
but, as it has been well observed, ' genius begins where rules 
end,' and there is no matter wherein rules can go a less way, or 
wherein there is more call for what may be called practical 
genius : that is, a far-sighted sagacity, as to the probable results 
of taking or not taking a certain step, and a delicate tact in 
judging of the peculiar circumstances of each case. 

The greater part of men are bigots to one or the other of the 
opposite systems, — of delay, or of expedition ; always for acting 
either on the maxim of ' never put off till to-morrow what can 
be done to-day,' or, on the opposite one, which is said to have 
been in the mouth of Talleyrand, ' never do to-da}^ what can 
be done to-morrow.' 

But still worse are those mock-wise men who mingle the 
two systems together, and are slow and quick just in the same 
degree that a really wise man is ; only, in the wrong places : 
who make their decisions hastily, and are slow in the execution ; 
begin in a hurry, and are dilatory in proceeding ; who unmask 
their battery hastily, and then think of loading their guns ; who 
cut their corn green, (according to the French proverbial ex- 
pression of 'manger son ble en herbe,') and let their fruit hang 
to ripen till it has been blown down by the winds and is rotting 
on the ground. 



200 Of Delays. 

' The Hpeness or wnripeiiess of the occasion must ever he well 
weighed.^ 

It is a cbitiraon phrase with the uncliscriminating advocates 
of delay, that ' The World is not yet ripe for such and such a 
measure.' But they usually forget to inquire ' Is it ripening f 
When, and how, is it likely to hecome ripe ? or. Are men's minds 
to ripen like winter pears, merely by laying them by, and let- 
ting them alone V 

'Time,' as Bishop Copleston has remarked, {Remains,'^. I'i^,) 
* is no agent.' When we speak of snch and such changes being 
brought about hy time, we- mean in time, — ^by the gradual and 
imperceptible operation of some gentle agency. We should 
observe, therefore, whether there is any such agency at work, 
and in what direction ;— whether to render a certain change 
more difficult or easier. If you are surrounded by the waters, 
and want to escape, you should observe whether the tide is 
flowing or ebbing. Li the one case, you should at once attempt 
the ford, at all hazards ; in the other, you have to wait patiently. 
And if the water be still, and neither rising nor falling, then you 
should consider that though there is no danger of drowning, you 
must remain insulated for ever, unless you cross the ford ; and 
that if this is to be done at all, it may be as well done at once. 

Tlie case of slavery in the United States is one of a rising 
tide. The rapid multiplication of slaves which has ah-eady 
rendered their emancipation a difficult and hazardous step, 
makes it more so every year, and increases the danger of a ser- 
vile war such as that of St. Domingo. 

The serfdom of the Russians is, perhaps, rather a case of still 
water. Tliere seems no great reason to expect that the state of 
things will grow either worse or better, spontaneously. 

In each of these cases, the slaves and the serfs are not ripe for 
freedom ; no enslaved people ever are ; and to wait before you 
bestow liberty, or political rights, till the recipients are fit to 
employ them aright, is to resolve not to go into the water till 
you can swim. You must make up your mind to encounter 
many very considerable evils, at first, and for some time, while 
men are learning to use the advantages conferred on them. 

It is the part of wisdom, however, to lessen these evils as 
far as can be done by careful preparation^ and by bringing for- 



Essay xxi.] Annotations. 201 

ward the several portions of any measure in tlie best order. A 
striking instance of the wisdom of this rule was exliibited in 
the measures adopted in reference to the Irish Roman-catholics. 
The first thing done was to bestow political power on the lowest, 
most ignorant, and most priest-ridden of the people, by giving 
them the elective franchise ; at tlie same time making this a 
source of continual irritation and continued agitation, because 
they were still restricted from electing members of their own 
persuasion, Roman-catholics were still precluded from sitting 
in jjarliament, because, forsooth, ' no one of that Church could 
be safely trusted with ^political i)Ower /' So said thousands, and 
hundreds of thousands, for nearly forty years, during which 
Roman-catholics had been exercising political power (as free- 
holders) in the most dangerous way possible. The next step 
was to admit Roman-catholics to seats ; which ought to have 
preceded — as almost every one now admits — the conferring of 
the elective franchise ; because the Roman-catholics who would 
thus have been admitted to a share of political power would 
have been few, and would have belonged to the educated classes. 
And last of all came that which should have been the first of 
all, — the providing of some such schooling for the mass of the 
people as might render them at least one degree less unfit for 
political power. 

And, was the long interval between the beginning and the 
end of this series of measures, occupied in providing against 
the dangers to be apprehended as resulting ? Quite the reverse. 
Instead of holding out, so as to gain better terms, we held out 
for worse. The ministry of 1806 provided certain conditions 
as safeguards, which that of 1829 would not venture to insist 
on. Tlie one ministry would have capitulated on terms ; the 
other surrendered nearly at discretion. Tlie one proposed 
to confer something of a free-will boon ; the other yielded 
avowedly to intimidation. 

' There is no secrecy comparable to celerity? 

"We have an illustration of the importance of ' celerity in the 
execution,' in circumstances in the liistory of our government 
of a later date than the instance above mentioned. A ministry 
which had established a certain system about which there had 



202 Of Delays. [Essay xxi. 

been much controversy, was succeeded by tbose.of the opposite 
party ; and these were eagerly looked to, by men of all parties, 
to see whether they would support that system in its integrity, 
or abolish, or materially modify it. They were warned of the 
importance of coming to a speedy decision one way or the other, 
and of clearly proclaiming it at once, in order to put a stop to 
false hopes and false fears. And it was jjointed out to them 
that those who had hitherto opposed that system were now, 
avowedly^ resting on their oars, and waiting to see what course 
the ministers they favoured would adopt. This warning was 
conveyed in a letter, pressing for a speedy answer: the. answer 
came in a year and a half! and after every encouragement had 
been given, during the interim of hesitation, to the opponents of 
the system to come forward to commit themselves anew to their 
opposition (which they did), then at length the system was 
adopted and approved, and carried on in the face of these mar- 
shalled opponents, embittei-ed by disapjjointment, and indignant 
at what they regarded as betrayal ! 

So much for taking one's time, and proceeding leisurely ! 

In another case, a measure of great benefit to the empire 
was proposed, which was approved by almost all sensible and 
public-spirited men acquainted with the case, but unacceptable 
to those who wished to ' fish in troubled waters,' and had 
sagacity enough to perceive the tendency of the measure, — and 
also by some few whose private interest was opposed to that of 
the Public, and by several others who were either misled by the 
above, or afraid of losing popularity with them. The wise 
course would have been, to make the exact arrangements 
secretly, for all the details, and then at once to bring forAvard 
the measure ; which would at ojice, and with ease, have been 
carried. Instead of this, the design was announced publicly, 
long before, so as to afford ample time and opportunity for 
getting up petitions, and otherwise organizing opposition*; and 
then advantage was taken of some flaw in the details of the 
measure, which had been overlooked, and might easily have 
been remedied : and thus the measure was defeated. 

It was as if a general should proclaim a month beforehand 
the direction in which he meant to march, so as to allow the 
enemy to prepare all kinds of obstacles ; and then, when he had 



Essay xxi.] Annotations. 203 

begun liis march, to be forced to turn back, from having left 
his pontoons and his artillery behind ! 

' To shoot off lefore the time, or to teach dangers to come on 
hy over-early luclcling towards them is another extreme? 

This error of taking some step prematurely, or of doing at 
one stride what had better have been done gradually, arises 
often, in a sensible man, from a sense of the shortness and un- 
certainty of life, and an impatience to ' see of the labour of his 
soul and be satisfied,' instead of leaving his designs to be carried 
into execution, or to be completed, by others, who may perhaps 
not do the work so well, or may be defeated by some rally of 
opponents. 

And sometimes it is even wise, under the circumstances, to 
proceed more hastily than would have been advisable if one 
could have been sure of being able to proceed without obstacles. 
It would have been, for instance, in itself, better to relax gra- 
dually the laws interfering with free trade, than to sweep them 
away at once. But the interval would have been occupied in 
endeavours, which might have been successful, to eifect a kind 
of counter-revolution, and re-establish those laws. And so it is 
with many other reforms. 

A man who plainly perceives that, as Bacon observes, there 
are some cases which call for promptitude, and others which 
require delay, and who has also sagacity enough to perceive 
which is which, will often be mortified at perceiving that he has 
come^ too late for some things, and too soon for others ; — that 
he is* like a skilful engineer, who perceives how he could, fifty 
years earlier, have effectually preserved an important harbour 
which is now irrecoverably silted up, and how he could, fifty 
years hence, though not at present, reclaim from the sea 
thousands of acres of fertile land at the delta of some river. 

Hence the proverb — 

' He that is truly wise and great. 
Lives both too early and too late.'* 



* See Proverbs and Precepts for Copy-Pieces for Schoolsw 



ESSAY XXII. OF CUNNING. 

WE take cunning for a sinister, or crooked wisdom ; and 
certainly there is a great difference between a cunning 
man and a wise man, not only in point of honesty, but in point 
of ability. Tliere be that can pack the cards, and yet cannot 
play well ; so tliere are some that are good in canvasses and 
factions, that are otherwise weak men. Again, it is one thing 
to undei-stand persons, and another thing to understand matters ; 
for many are perfect in men's humours, that are not greatly 
capable of the real part of business, which is the constitution of 
one that hath studied men more than books. Such men are 
fitter for practice than for counsel, and they are good but in 
their own alley : turn them to new men, and they have lost their 
aim ; so as' the old rule, to know a fool from a wise man, 
* Mitte ambos nudos ad ignotos, et videbis," doth scarce hold 
for them. And because these cunning men are like haberdashers 
of small wares, it is not amiss to set forth their shop. 

It is a point of cunning to wait' upon him wnth Avhom you 
speak, with your eye, as the Jesuits give it in precept^-for there 
be many wise men that have secret hearts and transparent 
countenances ; yet this wouldt be done with a demure abasing 
of your eye sometimes, as the Jesuits also do use. 

Another is, that when you have anything to obtain of 
present dispatch, you entertain and amuse the party with whom 
you deal with some other discourse, that he be not too much 
awake to make objections. I knew a counsellor and secretary, 
that never came to Queen Elizabeth of England with bills to 
sign, but he would always first put her into some discourse of 
state, that she might the less mind the bills. 

Tlie like surprise may be made by moving' things when the 



» As. That. See page 23. 

^ 'Send both nuked to strangers and thou shalt know.' 

^ Wait upon him with your eye. To look watchfully to him. ' As the eyes of 

servants look unto the hands of their masters, so our eyes toait vpon the 

Lord our God.' — Ps. cxxiii. 2. 

* Would. Should. 

• Move. To propoKc. 

' Let me but move one question to your daughter.' — Bhakespere. 



Essay xxii.] Of Cunning. 205 

party is in haste, and cannot stay to consider advisedly of tliat' 
is moved. 

If a man wonld cross a bnsiness that he doubts some other 
would handsomely and effectually move, let him pretend to wish 
it well, and move it himself in such sort as may foil it. 

The breaking off in the midst of that one was about to say, 
as if he took himself up, breeds a greater appetite in him with 
whom you confer to know more. 

And because it works better when anything seemeth to be 
gotten from you by question, than if you offer it of yourself, 
you may lay a bait for a question, by showing another visage 
and countenance than you are wont ; to the end, to give occa- 
sion for the party to ask what the matter^ is of the change, as 
Nehemiah did, — ' And I had not before that time been sad 
before the king.'' 

In things that are tender and unpleasing, it is good to break 
the ice by some whose words are of less weight, and to reserve 
the more weighty voice to come in as by chance, so that he 
may be asked the question upon the other's speech ; as Nar- 
cissus did, in relating to Claudius the marriage of Messalina 
and Silius." 

In things that a man would not be seen in himself, it is a 
23oint of cunning to borrow the name of the world ; as to say, 
' The world says,' or ' There is a speech abroad,' 

I knew one that, when he wrote a letter, he would put that 
which was most material in the postscript, as if it had been a 
bye matter. 

I knew another that, when he came to have speech, he would 
pass over that he intended most, and go forth, and come back 
again, and speak of it as a thing he had almost forgot. 

Some procure themselves to be surprised at such times as it 
is like the party, that they work upon, will suddenly come upon ' 
them, and be found with a letter in their hand, or doing some- 
what which they are not accustomed, to the end they may 



' That. That which. See page 64. 
" Matter. Cause. 

' To your quick-conceiving discontent, 
I'll read you matter deep and dangerous.' — ShaTcespcre. 
^ Nehemiah ii. 1. * Tacit. Ann. xi. 29. 

18 



206 Of Cunning. [Essay xxii. 

be apposed* of those things which of themselves they are desirous 
to utter. 

It is a point of cunning to let fall those Avords in a man's 
own name which he would have another man learn and use, and 
thereupon take advantage. I knew two that were competitors 
for the secretary's place, in Queen Elizabeth's time, and yet 
kept good quarter' betw^een themselves, and would confer one 
with another upon the business ; and the one of them said, that 
to be a secretary in the declination' of a monarchy was a ticklish 
thing, and that he did not affect^ it ; the otlier straight caught 
up those words, and discoursed with divers' of his friends, that 
he had no reason to desire to be secretary in the declining of a 
monarchy. The first man took hold of it, and found means it 
was told the queen ; who, hearing of a declination of monarchy, 
took it so ill, as° she would never after hear of the other's suit. 

Theri is a cunning, which we in England call 'the turning 
of the cat in the pan ;'^ w^hich is, when that wdiicli a man says 
to another, he lays it as if another had said it to him ; and, to 
say truth, it is not easy, when such a matter passed between 
two, to make it appear from which of them it first moved and 
began. 

It is a way that some men have, to glance and dart at 
others by justifying themselves by negatives ; as to say, 'This I 
do not ;' as Tigellinus did towards Burrhus, saying, ' Se non 



' Apposed. Questioned. (From appono, Lat.) ' Wliiles children of that age 
were playing in the streets, Christ was found sitting in the Temple, not to gaze on 
the outward glory of the house, or on the golden candlesticks, or tables, but to hear 
and appose the doctors.' — Bishop Hall. 

(The office of 'Foreign Apposcr' exists to this day in the Court of Exchequer.) 

* Quarter. Amity, concord. 

' Friends, all but now, 
In quarter.' — Shakespere. 
' Declination. Decoy. 

'Hope waits upon the flow'ry prime; 
And summer though it be less gay. 
Yet is not look'd on as a time 

Of declination or decay.' — Waller. 

* Affect. Aim at; endeavour after. See page 1. 

* Divers. 'Severed; more than one.' Divers friends thought it strange.' — 
Boyle. " As. That. See page 23. 

^ Cat' in the pan. Fan-cake. (Cate — cake — pan-cake). Usually turned by a 
dexterous toss of the cook. A pan-cake is, in Northamptonshire, still called a 
Y>a.n-cate. 



Essay xxii.] Of Cunning. 207 

diversas spes, sed incolumitatem iraperatoris simpliciter spec- 
tare." 

Some have in readiness so many tales and stories, as there is 
nothing they would insinuate but they can wrap it into a tale ; 
which servetli both to keep themselves more in' guard, and to 
make others carry it with more pleasure. 

It is a good point of cunning for a man to shape the answer 
he would have in his own words and propositions, for it makes 
the other party stick' the less. 

It is strange how long some men will lie in wait to speak 
somewhat they desire to say, and how far about they will fetch, 
and how many other matters they will beat over to come near 
it ; it is a thing of great patience, but yet of much use. 

A sudden, bold, and unexpected question, doth many times 
surprise a man, and lay him open. Like to him that, having 
changed his name, and walking in Paul's, another suddenly 
came behind him, and called him by his true name, whereat 
straightways* he looked back. 

But these small wares and petty points of cunning are 
infinite, and it M^ere a good deed to make a list of them ; for 
that nothing doth more hurt in a State than that cunning men 
pass for wise. 

But certainly some there are that know the resorts^ and falls" 
of business, that cannot sink into the main of it : like a house 
that hath convenient stairs and entries, but never a fair room : 
therefore you shall see them find out pretty' looses' in the con- 



' ' He did not look to various hopes, but solely to the safety of the emperor.' — 
Tacit. Ann. xiv. 57. 

"^ In. On. ' Let fowls multiply in the earth.' — Genesis i. 

^ Stick. To hesitate ; to scruple. ' Rather than impute our miscarriages to our 
own corruption, we do not stick to arraign Providence.' — South. 

* Straightways. Immediateli/. 

* Resorts. Springs. 

' ^f'ortune, 
Whose dark resorts since prudence cannot know, 
In vain it would provide for what shall be.' — Dryden. 
"Falls. Chances. 'To resist the _/aZ/s of fortune.' — Golden Book. 

* Pretty. Suitable; Jit ; tolerable. 

' My daughter's of a pretty age.' — Romeo and Jidiet. 
° Looses. Issues ; escapes from restraint, such as is difficulty or perplexity in 
deliberation. 

' And shot they with the square, the round, or forket pile, (head of an arrow) 
The loose gave such a twang as might be heard a mile.' — Drayton. 



208 Of Cunning. [Essay xxii. 

elusion,' but are no ways able to examine or debate matters : 
.and yet commonly they take advantage of tlieir inability, and 
would be thought wits of direction. Some build rather upon 
the abusing^ of others, and (as we now say) putting tricks upon 
them, than upon the soundness of their own proceedings ; but 
Solomon saith, ' Prudens advertit ad gressus suos ; stultus 
divertit ad dolos." 



ANNOTATIONS. 

' We take cunning for a sinister Qr crooked wisdom / and cer- 
tainly there is a great difference hetween a cunning man and 
a wise man,— not only in point of honesty, hut in jpoint of 
ahility,'' 

Whatever a man may be, intellectually, he labours under 
this disadvantage if he is of low moral principle, that he knows 
only the weak and bad parts of human nature, and not the 
belter. 

It was remarked by an intelligent Roman Catholic that the 
Confessional trains the priest to a knowledge not of human 
nature, but of mental nosology. ' It may therefore qualify 
them,' he said, ' for the treatment of a depraved, but not of a 
pure mind.' 

Now, what the Confessional is to the priest, that, a knave's 
own heart is to him. He can form no notion of a nobler 
nature than his own. He is like the goats in Robinson 
Crusoe's island, who saw clearly everything helow them, but 



This use of the word ' loose' seems to correspond with our use of the word ' solu- 
tion,' from so/i'o, to loose — 'Solve the question:' 

' He Ijad red her riddle, wliieh no wight 
Could ever loose.' — Spenser. 

* Conclusion. The close; the result of deliberation. 'I have heen reasoning, 
and in conclusion have thought it best to return to what Foi-tune hath made my 
home.' — Swift. 

Bacon's meaning in the use of the words taken together, ' Pretty looses in the 
conclusion,' is best explained by the original Latin of this Essay — ' Tales videtis 
in conclusionibus deliberationum quosdam exitus reperire.' 

^ Abuse. To deceive. 

' The Moor's abused by some most villanous knave. — Shahespere. 

* ' The wise man looks to his steps; the fool turns aside to the snare.* 



Essay xxii.] Annotations. 209 

very imperfectly what was above them, so that Eobinson Crusoe 
could never get at them from the valleys, but when he came 
upon them from the hill-top, took them quite by surprise. 

Miss Edgeworth describes such a person as one who divides 
all mankind into rogues and fools, and when he meets with an 
honest man of good sense, does not know what to make of him. 
Kothing, it is said, more puzzled Buonaparte. He would offer 
a man money ; if that failed, he would talk of glory., or promise 
him 7'ank and power : but if all these temptations failed, he set 
him down for an idiot, or a half-mad dreamer. Conscience was 
a thing he could not understand. Other things, then, being 
equal, an honest man has this advantage over a knave, that he 
understands more of human nature : for he knows that one 
honest man exists, and concludes that there must be more ; and 
he also knows, if he is not a mere simpleton, that there are 
Bome who are knavish ; but the knave can seldom be brought 
to believe in the existence of an honest man. The honest man 
may be deceived in particular persons, but the knave is su7'e to 
be deceived whenever he comes across an honest man who is 
not a mere fool. 

There are some writers of fiction whose productions have 
lately (1854) obtained considerable reputation, who have given 
spirited and just representations of particular characters, but an 
unnatural picture of society as a whole, from omitting (what 
they appear to have no notion of) all characters of good sense 
combined with good principle. Tliey seem to have formed 
no idea of any, but what one may call evrjdeig and icaKOTjdeig ; 
— simpletons and crafty knaves ; together with some who com- 
bined portions of each ; profligacy with silliness. But all their 
worthy people are represented as weak, and all those of superior 
intelligence as morally detestable. One of these writers was, in 
conversation, reprobating as unjust the censure passed on slavery, 
and maintaining that any ill-usage of a slave was as rare in 
America, as a hump-back or a club-foot among us ; — quite an 
exception. If so, the Americans must be a curious contrast to 
all that his fictions rejDresent ; for in them, all of superior 
intelligence, and most of those of no superior intelligence, are 
just the persons who would make the most tyrannical slave- 
masters ; being not only utterly unprincipled, but utterly hard- 
hearted, and strangers to all human feelings ! 

18* o 



210 Of Cunning. [Essay xxii. 

The sort of advantage whicli those of liigli moral principle 
possess, in tlie knowledge of mankind, is analogous to that 
which Man possesses over thef brute. Man is an animal, as 
well as the brute ; but he is something more. He has, and 
therefore can understand, most of their appetites and propensi- 
ties : but he has also faculties which they want, and of which 
they can form no notion. Even so, the bodily appetites, and 
the desire of gain, and other propensities, are common to the 
most elevated and the most degraded of mankind ; but the latter 
are deficient in the higher qualifications which the others possess ; 
and can, accordingly, so little understand them, that as Bacon 
remarks, ' of the highest virtues, the vulgar have no perception.' 
(Supremarum sensus nullus.) 

' These small wares and petty points of cunning are infinite. . . .' 

To these small wares, enumerated by Bacon, might be added 
a very hackneyed trick, which yet is wonderfully successful, — ■ 
to affect a delicacy about mentioning particulars, and hint at 
what you could bring forward, only you do not wish to give 
offence. 'We could give many cases to prove that such and 
such a medical system is all a delusion, and a piece of quackery; 
but we abstain, through tenderness for individuals, from bring- 
ing names before the Public' ' I have observed many things — 
which, however, I will not particularize — which convince me 
that Mr. Such-a-one is unfit for his oflice ; and others have 
made the same remark; but I do not like to bring them 
forward,' &c. &c. 

Thus an unarmed man keeps the unthinking in awe, by 
assuring them that he has a pair of loaded pistols in his pocket, 
though he is loth to produce them. 

The following trick is supposed (for no certain knowledge 
could be, or ever can be, obtained) to have been successfully 
practised in a transaction which occurred in the memory of 
persons now living: — A person whose conduct was about to 
undergo an investigation which it could not well stand, commu- 
nicated to one who was likely to be called on as a witness, all 
the details — a complete fabrication — of some atrocious mis- 
conduct: and when the witness narrated the conversation, 
.utterly denied the whole, and easily proved that the things 



Essay xxii.] Annotations. 211 

described could not possibly have occurred. Tlie result was, a 
universal acquittal, and a belief that all the accusations were 
the result of an atrocious conspiracy. But those who best 
knew the characters of the parties, were convinced that the 
witness had spoken nothing but the truth as to the alleged con- 
versation, and had been tricked by the accused party, who had 
invented a false accusation in order to defeat a true one. 

One not very uncommon device of some cunning people is 
an affectation of extreme simplicity ; which often has the effect, 
for the time at least, of throwing the company off their guard. 
And their plan is to affect a hasty, blunt, and what the French 
call ' brusque' manner. Tlie simple are apt to conclude that he 
who is not smooth and cautious must be honest, and wliat they 
call ' a rough diamond ;) in reality, a rough diamond — all but 
the diamond. Thus Hastings says of Richard III. : — 

* I think there's ne'er a man in Christendom 
Can lesser liide his love or hate than he ; 
For by his face straight you shall know his heart.' 

Another device is, an affectation of extreme modesty. It is 
a well-known and common art of the orator to extol the inge- 
nuity and eloquence of an opponent, that the effect of what he 
says may be attributed rather to his ability than to the strength 
of his cause, and that the hearers may even be led to feel a dis- 
trust and dread of him. We commonly find a barrister — 
especially when he has a weak cause — complimenting his 
' learned brother' on the skill with which he has pleaded. 

But in other cases besides those of public orations, an ex- 
cessive distrust of superior ability is a kind of fallacy by which 
weak men often mislead themselves, and cunning ones seek to 
mislead others. When you have offered strong and unanswer- 
able reasons in favor of some conclusion, or some line of con- 
duct, a person of exquisite modest humility will perhaps reply, 
' Of course I am not so presumptuous as to attempt to argue 
with you • I know well your superior ability and learning ; I have 
no doubt you could easily defeat me in any discussion ; but you 
must allow me to retain my own opinion.' 

Thus,.. if you are supposed to be an able reasoner, all the 
reasons you can offer are, on that ground, to go for nothing ! 
you must submit to what is called in Chess a stale-mate. 



212 Of Cunning. [Essay xxii. 

Sometimes indeed, even when there is no matter in immediate 
dispute, a man of reputed ahihty wilt be altogetlier shunned by 
some pereons, just as cautious people (according to Dean Swift's 
illustration) keep out of the way of a gun, which maij go off, 
they know not how, and do mischief. 

A late eminent writer once sought the acquaintance of a 
clergyman who was a very near neighbour, merely as such, and 
not with a view to any controversial discussion ; and the other 
declined all intercourse ; alleging that he was fully convinced 
his neighbour was heretical, but so far his superior in learning 
and ability that he could not presume to engage in any dis- 
cussion with him, and was afraid of some impression being 
made on himself. And in another instance, a man refused to 
the end of his life to hold any intercctfirse with one nearly con- 
nected with him, as 'believing him to be a man who could jf/'0i3« 
anything^ He did not allege any abuse of this supposed power ; 
but took for granted that whoever has the power to do evil will 
be sure to use it. 

Thucydides records (B, 8) the condemnation by the Athe- 
nians of one of their generals, Phrynichus, to whom they would 
not allow a hearing, because they had so high an opinion of 
his abilities that they thought him likely to make a skilful 
defence. 

Of course, if we have any good reason for suspecting a man's 
uprightness, or candour, we should be the more on our guard 
against him in proportion to his ability. And, universally, it 
would be rash for the unlearned to take for granted that they 
are bound to yield at once to every argument and objection 
urged by a learned and skilful controversialist, unless they can 
find an immediate answer. They should take time to consider, 
and should seek some champion on the opposite side, able to 
supply their deficiency. But it surely cannot be right that any 
one should be altogether denied a hearing, merely on the ground 
of his possessing superior intelligence. It is, no doubt, a com- 
pendious mode of getting rid of strong and unanswerable rea- 
sons,' to make them go for nothing^ merely because urged by an 
able man. But this spurious modesty is, in truth, a fallacy by 
which (as has been above said) the weak impose on themselves, 
and the crafty, on others. 

All Fallacies are pieces of cuiming, when used designedly. 



Essay xxii.] Annotatioyis. 213 

For by a fallacy is commonly imderetood any unsound mode of 
arguing, which appears to demand our conviction, and to he 
decisive of the question in hand, when in fairness it is not. 
And many are the contrivances which the sophist, who brings 
forward the fallacy, deliberately uses to withdraw our attention 
(his art closely resembling the juggler's) from the quarter where 
it lies.' 

Much ingenious artifice is often used to evade the odium of 
nrging a man to do something you wish him to do, or of dissuad- 
ing, or preventing him from doing wdiat you wish him not to 
do, or of refusing to grant something you are asked for, &c. 

The story, which has become proverbial, of ' pray don't nail 
his ears to the pump,' is a type of one class of these manoBuvres ; 
where you suggest something, or hold out a temptation, under 
the pretext of dissuading. 

When an illustrious personage was doubting about coming to 
England, being offered by government an ample pension for 
staying abroad, and tlireatened with a trial (in case of refusal) 
for alleged misconduct, one of the advisers of the party, wishing 
for troubled waters, in hopes of catching some fish, said, 'I 
entreat and emplore you to accept the offer, if you are at all 
conscious that any of the accusations against you are w^ell- 
founded. By all means stay abroad, unless you are quite sure 
of being able to establish your innocence.' This, of course, 
produced the effect he designed; since it made a consent to 
remain absent amount to a confession of guilt. 

Again, the granting of some permission, coupled with some 
condition which you know cannot or will not be fulfilled, is 
practically a prohibition. 

It is said that a gentleman, who was desirous to distribute 



* See Elements of Logic, B. iii., ' On Fallacies.' 

It may be as well to mention here that one of the Fallacies there treated of 

(§ 18, last paragraph) having lately been — much to my surprise — brought forward 

and elaborately defended, I have thought it needful to print a short postscript, 

giving a somewhat fuller description of it than I had before thought necessary. 

The fallacy in question consists in confounding together two different questions; 

(1) 'Whether a certain conclusion is established by this particular argument;' and 

(2) 'Whether the conclusion is true.' The subject is more fully discussed in the 
Articles on ' Cumulative Evidence ' in the ' United Church Joiirnaf for August and 
for October, 1856. 



214 Of Cunning. [Essay xxii. 

Bibles among his poor neighbours, found tliem willing and 
desirous to receive them, if permitted by their clergy. He 
accordingly applied to their bishop ; who applauded his liberality, 
and expressed his hearty concurrence ; only requiring that each 
person should come and ask his permission, which he promised 
never to refuse, except for some special reason. The gentleman, 
however, found, to his surprise, that no one of his poor neigh- 
bours went to ask this permission. And at length he was told 
the cause ; viz., that if any man of hiimble station waits on the 
bishop, it is understood that this is to obtain absolution for 
some heinous sin, beyond what \\\e pinest has power to pardon ; 
and thus his character is for ever blasted. Thus the bishop 
was enabled to say that he had never refused any man per- 
mission to obtain a Bible ! 

Again, a gentleman residing in Brittany, wished, it is said, 
to distribute Bibles among the people, and found he had to 
apply to the Authorities for a licence, which the law of France 
requires, in order to prevent the hawking of seditious publica- 
tions. The official applied to did not like broadly to refuse, 
but granted a licence for the distribution of French Bibles ; 
which are quite unintelligible to the poor Bretons. What was 
wanted was, of course, a licence to distribute Bibles in their 
oimi tongue, which is a dialect of Welsh. But this could not be 
obtained. He had granted a licence for the sale of Bibles, and 
that was enough ! ' 

Even so the stork in the fable was welcome to as much 
Boup as she could pick up with her bill, and the w^olf to as 
much mince-meat as he could get out of a narrow-necked 
bottle. 

Again, a person who had the control of a certain public hall, 
was asked for the use of it for a meeting of a society established 
in express opposition to an institution he was connected with. 
He might, on that ground, very fairly have refused permission, 
or have frankly retracted it, on consideration, if hastily and 
inconsiderately granted. But he readily granted the use of the 
hall ; and then aflerwards inserted the condition that none of 
the speakers were to say anything against his institution ; and 



' I do not vouch for the correctness of the above two anecdotes, but merely f(Mf 
having heard them, and have no reason to think them improbable. 



Essay xxii.] Annotations. -215 

as tliis was, of couree, tlie principal topic designed to be dwelt 
on, the condition was refused, and the permission withdrawn. 
He could no more go straigM to any object, than a hare in 
going from her form to her pasture. 

A skilful sophist Avill avoid a direct assertion of what he means 
unduly to assume ; because that might direct the reader's 
attention to the consideration of tlie question, whether it be 
true or not ; since that which is indisputable does not need so 
often to be asserted. It succeeds better, therefore, to allii<de to 
the proposition, as something curious and remarkable : just as 
the Koyal Society were imposed on by being asked to account 
for the fact that a vessel of water received no addition to its 
weight by a live fish being put into it. While they were seeking 
for the cause^ they forgot to ascertain the fact ; and thus ad- 
mitted, witliout suspicion, a mere fiction. So also, an eminent 
Scotch writer, instead of asserting that the ' advocates of logic 
have been worsted and driven from the field in every controversy,' 
(an assertion which, if made, would have been the more readily 
ascertained to be perfectly groundless) merely ohserves^ that ' it 
is a circumstance not a little remai'kable^ 

* There he that can pack the cards^ and yet cannot play welV 

Those whom Bacon here so well describes, are men of a 
clear and quick sight, but short-sighted. They are ingenious 
in particulars, but cannot take a comprehensive view of a whole. 
Such a man may make a good captain, but a bad general. He 
may be clever at surprising a piquet, but would fail in the 
management of a great army and the conduct of a campaign. 
He is like a chess-player who takes several pawns, but is check- 
mated. 

Goldsmith introduces, in The Vicar of Wakefield, a clever 
rogue, despising a plain straight-forward farmer, whom he 
generally contrives to cheat once a year ; yet he confesses that, 
in spite of this, the farmer went on thriving, while he was always 
poor. 

Indeed, it is a remarkable circumstance in reference to 
cunning persons, that they are often deficient, not only in com- 
prehensive far-sighted wisdom, but even in prudent, cautious 
circumspection. 



216 Of Cunning. [Essay xxii. 

There was a man of this description, who delighted in taking 
in every one he had to deal with, and was most ingenious and. 
successful in doing so. And yet his own estate, which was a 
very large one, he managed very ill ; and he bequeathed it abso- 
lutely to his widoio, whom he might have known to be in under- 
standing a mere child, and who accordingly became the prey 
of fortune-hunters. 

Numerous are the cases in which the cunning are grossly 
taken in by the cunning. Liars are often credulous. 

Many travellers have given cufious accounts of the snbtilty 
of the North American Indians, in stealing upon their enemies 
so as to take them by surprise : how they creep silently through 
the bushes, and carefully cover up their footmarks, &c. But 
these writers take no notice of the most curious circumstance 
of all, which is, that the enemies they thus surprise are usually 
Indians of the same race — men accustomed to practise just the 
same arts themselves. The ingenuity and caution of these 
people is called forth, and admirably displayed, on the occasion 
of their setting out on a warlike expedition ; but they have no 
settled habit of even ordinary prudence. When not roused to 
the exertion of their faculties by some pressing emergency, they 
are thoughtless and careless, and liable to be surprised, in their 
tm-n. To fortify their villages, so as to make a surprise impos- 
sible, or to keep up a regular patrol of sentries to watch for the 
approach of an enemy, has never occurred to them ! A savage 
is often a cunning, but never a wise, or even a prudent Being. 
And even so, among us, many who are skilful in playing tricks 
on others are often tricked themselves. 

It may be added that the cunning are often deceived by those 
who have no such intention. When a plain, straightforward 
man declares plainly his real motives or designs, they set them- 
selves to guess what these are, and hit on every possible solution 
but the right, taking for granted that he cannot mean what he 
says. Bacon's remark on this we have already given in the 
' Antitheta on Simulation and Dissimulation.' ' He who acts in 
all things openly does not deceive the less ; for most persons 
, either do not understand, or do not believe him.' 



Essay xxii.] Annotatloiis. 217 

^Nothing doth more hiort in a State than that cunning men ^ass 

for wise.'' 

Clim'chill thus describes the cunning man : — 

' With that low cunning which in fools supplies. 
And amply too, the place of being wise. 
Which nature, kind, indulgent parent, gave 
To qualify the hlockhead for a knave; 
With that smooth falsehood whose appearance charms. 
And Reason of each wholesome doubt disarms, 
Which to the lowest depths of guile descends. 
By vilest means pursues the vilest ends ; 
Wears friendship's mask for purposes of spite, 
Fawns in the day, and butchers in tlie night.'^ 

It is indeed an unfortunate thing for the public tliat the 
cunning pass for wise, — that those whom Bacon compares to ' a 
house with convenient stairs and entry, but never a fair room' 
should be the men who (accordingly) are the most likely to rise 
to high office. The art of gaining power, and that of using it 
well, are too often found in different persons. 



The Rosciad, 1. 117. 



19 



ESSAY XXIIL OF WISDOM FOR A MAN'S 
SELF. 

A ]Sr ant is a wise creature for itself, but it is a shrewd' thing 
-^^^ in an orchard or garden ; and certainly men that are great 
lovers of themselves w^aste^ the public. Divide with reason 
between self-love and society ; and be so true to thyself as thou 
be not false to others, especially to thy king and country. It 
is a poor centre of a man's actions, himself. It is right earth ; 
for that only stands fast upon his own centre ; whereas all 
things that have affinity with the heavens move upon the centre 
of another, which they benefit. Tlie referring of all to a man's 
self is more tolerable in a sovereign prince, because themselves 
are not only themselves, but their good and evil is at the peril 
of the public fortune : but it is a desperate evil in a servant to 
a prince, or a citizen in a republic ; for whatsoever affairs pass 
such a man's hands, he crooketh' them to his own ends, which 
must needs be often eccentric, to the ends of his master or State : 
therefore, let princes or States chuse such servants as have not 
this mark, except they mean their service should be made but 
the accessary. That which maketh the effect more pernicious 
is, that all proportion is lost. It were disproportion enough for 
the servant's good to be preferred before the master's ; but yet 
it is a greater extreme, when a little good of the servant shall 
carry things against the great good of the master's : and yet 
that is the case of bad officers, treasurers, ambassadors, generals, 
and other false and corrupt servants, which set a bias* upon their 
bowl, of their own petty ends and envies, to the overthrow of 



' Shrewi Mischievous. 

' Do my Lord of Canterbury 
A shrewd turn, and he is your friend for ever.' — Shakcspere. 

* Waste. 2o lay waste ; to desolate. 

' Peace to corrupt, no less than war to waste.' — Milton. 
' Crook. To pervert. ' St. Augustine sayeth himself that images be of more 
force to crooke an unhappye soule than to teach and instruct him.' — Hmnilies — 
' Sermon against Idolatry.' 

* Bias. A weight lodged on one side of the bowl, which turns it from the straight 
line. 

' Madam, we'll play at bowls, — 
'Twill make me think the world is full of rubs. 
And that my fortune runs against the bias.' — Shahespere 



Essay xxiii.] Annotations. 219 

their master's great and important aiFairs. And for the most 
part, the good such servants receive is after the model of their 
own fortune, but the hurt they sell for that good is after the 
model of their master's fortune. And certainly it is the nature 
of extreme self-lovers, as' they will set a house on fire and" it 
were but to roast their eggs ; and yet these men many times 
hold credit with their masters, because their study is but to 
please them, and profit themselves ; and for either respect' they 
will abandon the good of their aftairs. 

Wisdom for a man's self is, in many branches thereof, a 
depraved thing : it is the wisdom of rats, that will be sure to 
leave a house some time before its fall : it is the wisdom of the 
fox, that thrusts out the badger, who digged and made room 
for him : it is the wisdom of crocodiles, that shed tears when 
they would devour. But that which is sj^ecially to be noted is, 
that those wdiich (as Cicero says of Pompey) are ' sui amantes 
sine rivali'^ are many times unfortunate ; and Avhereas they 
have all their time sacrificed to themselves, they become in the 
end themselves sacrifices to the inconstancy of fortune, whose 
wings they thought by their self-wisdom to have pinioned. 



AKNOTATIONS. 

^An ant is a shrewd thing in a garden.'' 

This was probably the established notion in Bacon's time, 
as it is with some, perhaps, now. People seeing plants in a 
sickly state covered with ants, attributed the mischief to them ; 
the fact being that the ants do them neither harm nor good, 
but are occupied in sucking the secretion of the aphides which 
swarm on diseased plants, and are partly the cause, partly the 
effect of disease. If he had carefully watched the ants, he 



' As. That. See page 23. 

^ And. If. ' An' it like you.' — Shakespere. 

* Respect. Consideration. 

' Tliere's the respect 
That makes calamity of so long life.' — Shakespere. 

* ' Lovers of themselves without a rival.' — Cic. ad. Q. F. iii, 8. 



220 Of Wisdom for a Man's Self. [Essay xxiii. 

would have seen them sucking the aphides, and the aphides 
sucking the plant. 

But Bacon, though he had a great fancy for making ohserva- 
tions and experiments in every branch of natural philosophy 
and natural history, was remarkably unskilful in that depart- 
ment. His observations were slight and inaccurate, and his 
reasonings from them very rash. It is true we ought not to 
measure a man of those days by the standard of the present, 
when science has — partly through Bacon's means — made such 
advances. But he was below (in this point) what might have 
been attained, and was attained, in his own day, Copernicus' 
theory was not unknown in his day ; yet he seems to have 
thought lightly of it. Also Gilbert the Magnetist he did not 
duly appreciate. And most remarkable of all, perhaps, is his 
error — noticed in the preface — respecting the mistletoe ; a 
trifling matter in itself: but the casting up of a sum is a test of 
one's arithmetic, whether the items be farthings or pouuds. 

Unlike Bacon, Socrates greatly discouraged all branches of 
natural philosophy. According to Xenophon, he derided those 
who inquired concerning the motions of the heavenly bodies, 
the tides, the atmosphere, &c., asking whether they expected to 
be able to control these things ? or whether, again, they had so 
completely mastered all that related to human affairs, of which 
Man does possess the control, that they might afford to devote 
themselves to speculations remote from practice ? 

That nature can be controlled, by obeying (and only by obey- 
ing) her laws (' Naturae non imperatur, nisi parendo,') the maxim 
which Bacon so earnestly dwells on, and which furnishes the 
proper answer — though well worthy of that earnestness, — is 
what all mankind — even savages — have always in some degree 
acted on. For he who sows his corn at the season when he 
has observed that fertilizing rains may be expected, and so that 
by the time it approaches maturity the season of sunshine may 
be expected, does virtually command rain and sun. And the 
mariner commands the winds and tides, who so times his voyage, 
from observation, as to be likely to meet with favourable winds 
and tides. And so in an infinite number of other cases. 



Essay xxiii,] Annotations. 221 

^Divide with reason hetwemi self-love and society ; and he so true 
to thyself as thoio he not false to others.'' 

The difference between self-love and selfishness has been well 
explained by Aristotle, though he has not accounted for the use 
of the word (ptXavria. It is clear that selfishness exists only in 
reference to others, and could have no place in one who lived 
alone on a des||-t island, though he might have of course every 
degree of self-love ; for selfishness is not an excess of self-love, 
and consists not in an over-desire of happiness, but in placing 
your happiness in something which interferes with, or leaves 
you regardless of, that of others. Nor are we to suppose that 
selfishness and want of feeling are either the same or insepa- 
rable. For, on the one hand, I have known such as have had 
very little feeling, but felt for others as much nearly as for 
themselves, and were, therefore, far from selfish ; and, on the 
other hand, some, of very acute feelings, feel for no one but 
themselves, and, indeed, are sometimes amongst the most cruel. 

Under this head of the ' dividing between self-love and 
society' may be placed a distinction made by Bishop Copleston* 
between two things which he says are occasionally confounded 
by Locke, as well as most other writers on education. Two 
things,' he remarks, ' ought to be kept perfectly distinct — viz., 
that mode of education which would be most beneficial, as a 
system, to society at large, with that which would contribute 
most to the advantage and prosperity of an individual. Now, 
the peculiar interest of the individual is not always the same, 
is seldom precisely the same, is even frequently at variance, 
with the interest of the public. And he who serves the one 
most faithfully always forgets, and often injures, the other. 
Tlie latter is that alone which deserves the attention of a 
philosopher ; the former — individual interest — is narrow, selfish, 
and mercenary. It is the mode of education which would fit 
for a specific employment, or contribute most to individual 
advantage and prosperity, on which the world are most eager to 
inform themselves ; but the persons, who instruct them, how- 
ever they may deserve the thanks and esteem of those whom 
they benefit, do no service to mankind. There are but so many 



' Memoir of Bishop Copleston, page 307. 

19* 



222 Of Wisdom for a Mail's Self [Essay xxiii. 

good places in the tlieatre of life ; and lie who puts us in the 
way of procuring one of them does to us indeed a great favour, 
but none to the whole assembly.' He adds a little after, ' A 
wide space is left to the discretion of the individual, where the 
claims of the community are either not pressing or wdiolly silent.' 
Another point in which the advantage of the individual is 
quite distinct from that of the public, I have touched upon in 
a Lecture on the Pr^ofessions, from which I take the liberty of 
adding an extract. 'It is w^orth remarking tlmt there is one 
point wherein some branches of the Law differ from others, and 
agree with some professions of a totally ditferent class. Superior 
ability and professional skill, in a Judge or a Conveyancer, 
are, if combined with integrity, a piihlio benefit. They 
confer a service on certain individuals, not at the eocjjense of 
any others: and the death or retirement of a man thus qualified, 
is a loss to the community. And the same may be said of a 
physician, a manufacturer, a navigator, &c., of extraordinary 
ability, A pleader, on the contrary, of powers far above the 
average, is not, as such, serviceable to the Public, fie obtains 
wealth and credit for himself and his family ; but any special 
advantage accruing from his superior ability, to those who 
chance to be his clients, is just so much loss to those he chances 
to be op>posed to: and which party is, on each occasion, in 
the right, must be regarded as an even chance. His death, 
therefore, would be no loss to the Public ; only, to those parti- 
cular persons who might have benefited by his superior abilities, 
at their opponents' expense. It is not that advocates generally, 
are not useful to the Public. They are even necessary. But 
extraordinary ability in an advocate, is an advantage only to 
himself and his friends. To the Public, the most desirable thing 
is, that pleaders should be as eqimUy matched as possible ; so 
that neither John Doe nor Eichard Eoe should have any advan- 
tage independent of the goodness of his cause. Extraordinary 
ability in an advocate may indeed raise him to great wealth, or 
to a seat on the bench, or in the senate ; and he may use these 
advantages — as many illustrious examples show, greatly to the 
public benefit. But then, it is not as an advocate, directly, 
but as a rich man, as a judge, or as a senator, that he thus 
benefits his country.' 



Essay xxiii.] Annotations. 223 

' Bad officers, treasurers, ambassadors, generals, and other false 
and corrupt servants, set a bias ujpon their bowl, of their own 
petty ends and envies, to the overthrow of their inastei'^s great 
a/nd important affairs^ 

It seems not to have occurred to Bacon that tlie miscliicf 
he so well describes could take place except from the seliisli 
wisdom of persons entrusted with some employment, and sacri- 
ficing the interest of their employer to their own. But in 
truth, the greatest amount of evils of this class — that is, the 
sacrifice of public good to individual profit, — ^lias arisen from the 
favour claimed hj, and shown to, certain classes of men, in no 
ofiicial situation, wlio have persuaded the nation (and, doubtless, 
sometimes themselves also), that their own interest was that of 
the State. Both the Spaniards and the English prohibited 
their colonies from trading with any but the mother country ; 
and also from manufacturing for themselves ; though the 
colonists were fellow-citizens, and were virtually taxed for the 
profit, not of the State, but of certain manufacturers and mer- 
chants. For, if they had found the goods produced in the 
mother-country to be cheaper and better than they could make 
for themselves, or buy elsewhere, they would have supplied 
themselves with these of their own accord, without need of pro- 
hibiting laws ; but whenever this was not the case — that is, 
whenever there was any occasion for such a law, — ^it is plain 
they were paying an extra price, or buying inferior articles, for 
the profit of the manufacturers at home. Yet this never seemed 
to strike even the Americans themselves, or their advocates, at 
the time when the revolt broke out. It was only avowed taxa- 
tion for the benefit of the government at home (which had laid 
out something for them) that they complained of. 

And this did not arise from comparative indifference to the 
welfare of our colonial fellow-subjects ; for the like sort of 
policy has been long pursued at home. We imported timber of 
inferior quality from Canada, when better was to be had at a 
tenth part of the distance, lest saw-mills in Canada, and timber- 
ships engaged in that trade, should suffer a diminution of j^rofit ; 
though the total value of them all put together did not probably 
equal the annual loss sustained by the Public. And we pro- 
hibited the refining of sugar in the sugar colonies, and chose to 



224 Of Wisdo7)i for a Mail's Self. [Essay xxiii. 

import it in tlie most bulky and most perishable form, for the 
benefit of a few English sugar-bakers ; whose total profits did 
not probably amount to as many shillings as the nation lost 
pounds. 

And the land-owners maintained, till very lately, a monopoly 
against the bread-consumers, which amounted virtually to a tax 
on every loaf, for the sake of keeping up rents. 

' Other selfishness,' says Mr. Senior, in his Lectures on Politi- 
cal Economy^ ' may be as intense, but none is so unblushing, 
because none so much tolerated, as that of a monopolist claiming 
a vested interest in a public injury.' But, doubtless, many of 
these claimants persuaded themselves, as well as the nation, that 
they were promoting the jpuhlic good. 



ESSAY XXIV. OF IISHSTOVATIONS. 

AS tlie births of living creatures at first are ill-shapen, so are 
all innovations, wliieli are the births of time : yet, notwith- 
standing, as those that first bring honour into their family are 
commonly more worthy than most that succeed, so the first 
precedent (if it be good) is seldom attained by imitation : for 
ill, to man's nature as it stands perverted, hath a natural motion, 
strongest in continuance ; but good, as a forced motion, strongest 
at first. Surely every medicine is an innovation, and he that 
will not apply new remedies must expect new evils : for time is 
the greatest innovator ; and if time of course alters things to* 
the worse, and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the 
better, what shall be the end ? It is true that what is settled 
by custom, though it be not good, yet at least it is fit ; and 
those things which have long gone together, are, as it were, 
confederate with themselves ; whereas new things piece not so 
well ; but, though they help by their utility, yet they trouble 
by their inconformity f besides, they are like strangers, more 
admired, and less favoured. All this is true, if time stood still ; 
which, contrariwise, moveth so round,' that a froward retention 
of custom is as turbulent a thing as an innovation ; and they 
that reverence too much old times, are but a scorn to the new. 
' It were good, therefore, that men in their innovations, would 
follow the example of time itself, which indeed innovateth 
greatly, but quietly, and by degrees scarce to be perceived ; for 
otherwise, whatsoever is new is unlooked for — and ever it mends 
some, and pairs* others ; and he that is holpen takes it for a 
fortune, and thanks the time ; and he that is hurt, for a wrong, 
and imputeth it to the author. It is good also not to try ex- 



'To. For. 

' Marks and points out each man of us to slaughter.' — Ben Jonson. 
' Inconformity. Incongruity ; discordance. 

' Round. Rapid. ' Sir Roger heard them on a round trot.' — Addison. 
* Pair. To impair. 

' ' No faith so'. fast,' quoth he, ' but flesh does paire' 
' Flesh may impaire,' quoth he, ' but reason can repaire.' ' — Spenser. 
'What profiteth it to a man if he wynne all the worlds and do peyringe to his 
80ul ?'— Wickliff 's Translation of Mark viii. 
P 



226 



Of Innovations. 



[Essay xxiv. 



periments in States, except the necessity be urgent, or the utility 
evident ; and well to beware, that it be the reformation that 
draweth on the change, and not the desire of change that pre- 
tendeth' the reformation : and lastly, that the novelty, though 
it be not rejected, yet be held for a suspect ;^ and, as the 
Scripture saith, ' That we make a stand upon the ancient way, 
and then look about us, and discover what is the straight and 
right way, and so to walk in it." 



ANTITHETA ON 
Pro. 
' Omnis medicina innovatio. 
' Every medicament is an innovation.' 

' Qui nova remedia fugit, nova mala 
operitur. 

'He who sJiuns new remedies must ex- 
pect new evils' 

'Novator maximus tempus: quidni 
igitur tempus imitemur ? 

' Time is the great innovator ; why 
then not imitate Time V 

'Morosa morum retentio, res turbu- 
lenta est seque ac novitas. 

'A stubborn adherence to old practices 
breeds tumults no less than novelty.' 

' Cum per se res mutentur in deterius, 
si consilio in melius non mutentur, quis 
finis erit mali ? 

' Since things spo7itaneously change 
for the worse, if they be not by design 
changed for the better, evils must accu- 
itnulate without end.' 



INNOVATIONS. 

Contra. 
' Nullus auctor placet, prater tempus. 
' One bows willingly to no authority 
but T'ime.' 

' Nulla novitas absque injuria ; nam 
prffisentia convellit. 

' Every novelty does ftome hurt, for it 
unsettles what is established.' 

' Qufc usu obtinuere, si non bona, at 
saltern apta inter se sunt. 

' Tilings that are settled by long use, 
if not absolutely good, at least fit well 
together.' 

' Quis novator tempus imitatur, quod 
novationesitainsinuat,utsensusfallant? 

' Show me the innovator icho imitates 
Time, that slides in changes imper- 
ceptibly.' 

' Quod praeter spem evenit, cui pro- 
dest, minus acceptum ; cui obest magis 
molestum. 

' What happens unexpectedly is, for 
that reason, less welcome to him whom 
it profits, and more galling to him whom 
it hurts' 



' Pretend. To put forward or exhibit as a cover. 
' Lest that heavenly form, pretended 
To hellish falsehood, snare them.' — Milton. 
' Suspect. Something suspicious. ' If the king ends the difference, and takes 
■ away the suspect.' — Suckling. 
' Compare Jer. vi. 16. 



Essay xxiv.] Annotations. 227 

ANNOTATIONS. 

* Time is the greatest innovator.^ 

"Wlien Bacon speaks of time as an 'innovator,' he mlglit 
have remarked, by the way — what of com-se he well knew — 
that though this is an allowable and convenient form of expres- 
sion, it is not literally correct. Bishop Copleston, in the remark 
already referred to in the notes on ' Delays,' terms the regarding 
time as an agent one of the commonest errors ; for ' in reality 
time does notliing and is nothing. We use it,' he goes on to 
say, ' as a compendious expression for all those causes which act 
slowly and imperceptibly. But, unless some positive cause is 
in action, no change takes place in the lapse of one thousand 
years ; as, for instance, in a drop of water enclosed in a cavity 
of silex. Tlie most intelligent writers are not free from this 
illusion. For instance, Simond, in his Switzerland., speaking 
of a mountain-scene, says — ' The quarry from which the mate- 
rials of the bridge came, is just above your head, and the miners 
are still at work : air, water, frost, weight, and time.'' Thus, too, 
those politicians who object to any positive enactments aifecting 
the Constitution, and who talk of the gentle operation of time, 
and of our Constitution itself being the work of time, forget 
that it is human agency all along which is the efficient cause. 
Time does nothing.' Thus far Bishop Copleston.* 

But we are so much influenced by our own use of language, 
that, though no one can doubt, when the question is put before 
him, that effects are produced not hy time, but m time, we are 
accustomed to represent Time as armed with a scythe, and 
mowing down all before him. 

' N'ew things are like strangers, more admired, and less 
favoured.'' 

Bacon has omitted to notice, in reference to this point, what 
nevertheless is well worth remarking as a curious circumstance, 
that there are in most languages proverbial sayings respecting 
it, apparently opposed to each other ; as for instance, that men 



Re7nains of Bishop Copleston. 



228 Of Innovations. [Essay xxiv. 

are attached to what they have been used to ; that iTse is a 
second nature ; that they fondly cling to the institutions and 
practices they have been accustomed to, and can hardly be pre- 
vailed on to change them even for better ; and then, again, on 
the other side, that men have a natural craving for novelty ; 
that unvarying sameness is tiresome ; that some variety — some 
change, even for the worse, is agreeably refresliing, &c. 

The truth is, that in all the serious and important aifairs of 
life men are attached to what they have been used to ; in 
matters of 07'7iament they covet novelty ; in all systems and 
institutions — in all the ordinary business of life — in all funda- 
mentals — they cling to what is the established course ; in matters 
of detail — in what lies, as it were, on the surface — they seek 
variety, Man may, in reference to this point, be compared to 
a tree, whose stem and main branches stand year after year, but 
whose leaves and flowers are fresh eveiy season. 

In most countries people like change in the fashions of their 
dress and furniture ; in almost all, they like new music, new 
poems, and novels (so called in reference to this taste), pictures, 
flowers, games, &c,, but they are wedded to what is established 
in laws, institutions, systems, and in all that relates to the main 
business of life. 

This distinction is one which it may often be of great impor- 
tance to keep in mind. For instance, the ancient Eomans and 
other Pagans seldom objected to the addition of a new god to 
their list ; and it is said that some of them actually did propose 
to enrol Jesus among the number. Tliis was quite consonant 
to the genius of their mythological system. But the overthrow 
of the whole system itself, and the substitution of a fundamen- 
tally different religion, was a thing they at first regarded with 
alarm and horror ; all their feelings were enlisted against such 
a radical change. And any one who should imagine that the 
Gospel could be received with some degree of favour on account 
of its being new, because, forsooth, men like novelties, and that, 
therefore, something short of the most overpowering miraculous 
proofs might have sufficed for its introduction and spread, — 
such a person must have entirely overlooked the distinction 
between the kinds of things in which men do or do not favour 
what is new. 

And the like holds good in all departments of life. Kew 



Essay xxiv.] Annotations. ^29 

medicines, for instance, come into vogue from time to time, 
witli or without good reason ; but a fundamentally new system 
of medicine, whether right or wrong, is sure to have the strongest 
prejudices enlisted against it. If when the celebrated Harvey 
discovered the circulation of the blood, he had, on the ground 
that people often readily introduced some new medicine, calcu- 
lated on a favourable reception, or even a fair hearing, for his 
doctrine, which went to establish a fundamental revolution, he 
would soon have been undeceived by the vehement and general 
opjwsition with which he was encountered. 

And it was the physicians of the highest standing that most 
opposed Ilarvey. It was the most experienced navigators that 
opposed Columbus' views. It was those most convei-sant with 
the management of the Post-office that were the last to approve 
of the plan of the uniform penny-postage. For, the greater any 
one's experience and skill in his own department, and the more 
lie is entiiHed to the deference which is proverbially due to each 
man in his own province [^ peritis credendum est in arte sua'] 
the more likely, indeed, he will be to be a good judge of im- 
provements in details, or even to introduce them himself; but 
the more unlikely to give a fair hearing to any proposed radical 
change. An experienced stage-coachman is likely to be a good 
judge of all that relates to turnpike-roads and coach-horses ; but 
3^ou should not consult him about railroads and steam-carriages. 
Again, every one knows how slowly and with what difficulty 
farmers are prevailed on to adopt an}^ new system of husbandry, 
even when the faults of an old established usage, and the ad- 
vantage of a cbange, can be made evident to the senses. 

An anecdote' is told of a gentleman who, in riding through 
the deep and shady Devonshire lanes, became entangled in the 
intricacies of their numberless windings; and not being able to 
obtain a sufficiently wide view of the country to know where- 
abouts lie was, trotted briskly on, in the confident hope that he 
should at length come to some house whose inhabitants would 
direct him, or to some more open spot from which he could 
take a survey of the different roads, and observe whither they 
led. After proceeding a long time in this manner, he was sur- 
prised to find a perfect uniformity in the countiy through which 



What follows is extracted from tlie London Review of 1829. 



230 Of Innovations. [Essay xxiy. 

he passed, and to meet with no human being, nor come in sight 
of any habitation. He was, however, encouraged by observing, 
as he advanced, the prints of horses' feet, which indicated that 
he was in no unfrequented track : these became continually 
more and more numerous the further he went, so as to aflbrd 
him a still increasing assurance of his being in the immediate 
neighbourhood of some great road or populous village ; and he 
accordingly paid the less anxious attention to the beai'ings of 
the country, from being confident that he was in the right way. 
But still he saw neither house nor human creature ; and, at 
length the recurrence of the same objects by the roadakle 
opened his eyes to the fact, that all this time, misled by the 
multitude of the turnings, he had been riding in a circle ; and 
that the footmarks, the sight of which had so cheered him, were 
those of his own horse / their number, of course, increasing with 
every circuit he took. Had he not fortunately made this dis- 
covery, perhaps he might have been riding there now. 

The truth of the tale (and we can assure our readers that we 
at least did not invent it) does not make it the less useful by 
way of apologue : and the moral we would deduce from it is, 
that in many parts of the conduct of life, and not least in 
government and legislation, men are liable to folloiv the traeh 
of their own footsteps, — ^to set themselves an example, — ^and to 
flatter themselves that they are going right, from their con- 
formity to their own precedent. 

It is commonly and truly said, when any neiG and ^mtried 
measure is proposed, that we cannot fully estimate the incon- 
veniences it may lead to in practice ; but we are convinced this 
is even still more the case with any system which has long heen 
in Ojperation, The evils to which it may contribute, and the 
obstacles it may present to the attainment of any good, are 
partly overlooked, or lightly regarded, on account of their 
familiarity, partly attributed to such other causes as perhaps 
really do co-operate in producing the same effects, and ranked 
along with the unavoidable alloys of human happiness, — ^the 
inconveniences from which no human policy can entirely exempt 
us. In some remote and unimproved districts, if you complain 
of the streets of a town being dirty and dark, as those of London 
were for many ages, the inhabitants tell you that the nights are 
cloudy and the weather rainy : as for their streets, they ai-e just 



Essay xxiv.] Annotations. 231 

such as they have long heen ; and the exj^edient of paving and 
lighting has occurred to nobody. The ancient Romans had, 
probably, no idea that a civilized community could exist without 
slaves. Tliat the same work can be done much better and 
cheaper by freemen, and that their odious system contained the 
seeds of the destruction of their empire, were truths which, 
familiarized as they were to the then existing state of society, 
they were not likely to suspect. ' If you allow of no plunder- 
ing, said an astonished Mahratta chief to some English officei*s, 
^ how is it possible for you to maintain such line armies as you 
bring into the field V He and his ancestors, time out of mind, 
had doubtless been following their own footsteps in the esta- 
blished routine ; and had accordingly never dreamed that pillage 
is inexpedient as a source of revenue, or even one that can 
possibly be dispensed with. ' That is the way it is always done. 
Sir ;' or ' We always do so and so ;' are the answei-s generally 
returned by the vulgar to an inquiry as to the reason of any 
practice. Recent experiment, indeed, ma}^ bring to light and 
often exaggerate the defects of a new system ; but long fami- 
liarity blinds us to those very defects.' 

And among the obstacles those have to encounter who are 
advocating any kind of novelty, this is one : that every instance of 
failu7'e in the application of any new system is sure to be, by 
most people, attributed to the system itself ; while in the case 
of an old and established system, any failure is either reckoned 
a mere unavoidable accident, or is attributed to the individual. 

If, for instance, some crop turns out ill, under an established 
system of agriculture, this failure is attributed either to the 
weather, or else to unskilfulness in tlie individual farmer ; but 
if it takes place under a new system of husbandry, it will 
usually be taken as a decisive proof that the system itself is 
wrong. So again, if a jDatient dies, under the routine-system 
of Medicine, blame is laid, if there be any, on the individual 
practitioner : but if a patient die who has been treated accord- 
ing to some new system, this is likely to be taken as conclusive 
against the system itself. And so, in other cases. 

One practical consequence of the attachment of men to what 
they have loiig been used to is, that it is a great point gained, 



London Review, 1829. 



232 Of Innovations. [Essay xxiy. 

when there does exist need for a change, to have brought about 
some change, even though little or nothing of improvement, 
because we may look forward with cheering hope to a femedy 
of the remedy — a removal of the newly introduced evils, — as a 
change far more easily to be brought about than the first 
change. Alterations in any building are easily made iDliile the 
^nortar is wet. ' So it is in legislation and in all human aifairs. 
While the most inconvenient and absurd laws are suffered to 
remain michanged for successive generations, hardly an act is 
passed that any defects in it are not met by ' acts to amend' it, 
in the next and in succeeding sessions. 

' Those who remember the University of Oxford at the com- 
mencement of this century, when, in fact, it hardly deserved 
the name of an univereity, — ^who remember with what difficulty, 
and after what long delay, the first statute for degi-ee-examina- 
tions was introduced — ^liow palpable were the defects of that 
statute, and how imperfectly it worked, — and, lastly, how easily, 
in comparison, these defects were, one by one, remedied, and suc- 
cessive improvemente from time to time introduced, — such per- 
sons must have profited little by experience, if they deprecate the 
application of any remedy to any existing law or institution that 
is in itself evil, for fear the remedy should not be such, in the 
first essay, as to meet their wishes." 

' A f toward retention of custom is as turhulent as an innova- 
tion ^ and they that reverence old times too much are hut a 
scorn to the new.^ 

To avoid the two opposite evils — the liability to sudden and 
violent changes, and the adlierence to established usage, when 
inconvenient or mischievous, — to give the requisite stability to 
governments and other institutions, without shutting the door 
against improvement, — this is a problem which both ancient and 
modern legislators have not well succeeded in solving. Some, 
like the ancient Medes and Persians, and like Lycurgus, have 
attempted to prohibit all change ; but those who constantly 
appeal to the wisdom of their ancestors as a sufficient reason 
for perpetuating everything these has^e established, forget two 



' See Kingdom of Christ, Appendix to Essay ii. note 0, page 355, 4th editioix 



Essay xxiv.] Annotations. ' 233 

things : first, that they cannot liope for ever to persuade all 
successive generations of men that there was once one genera- 
tion of such infallible wisdom as to be entitled to control all 
their descendants for ever ; which is to make the earth, in fact, 
the possession not of the living, but of the deadend, secondly, 
that even supposing our ancestors gifted with s"i infallibility, 
many cases must arise in which it may be reasonably doubted 
wdiether they themselves would not have advocated, if living, 
changes called for by altered circumstances. For instance, those 
who denoted the southern quarter from ineridies (noon) would 
not have been so foolish as to retain that language had they 
gone to live in a hemisphere where the sun at noon is in the 
north. But, as Dr. Cooke Taylor remarks in The Bishop: 
' An antiquated form, however perverted from its original pur- 
pose, gratifies the lazy in their love of ease ; it saves them the 
trouble of exchanging their old mum.psimiis for the new sumjp- 
sitnus : and new the sumpsimus must appear, though it be a 
restoration ; it averts the mortification of confessing error, which 
is always so abhorrent to the self-satisfied stupidity of those 
who grow old without gaining experience.' 

' Vel quia nil rectum, nisi quod placuit sibi, ducunt ; 
Vel quia turpe putant parere minoribus, et qure 
Imberbi didicere, senes perdenda fateri.' 

It is to be observed, however, that in almost every depart- 
ment of life, the evil that has very long existed will often be 
less clearly perceived, and less complained of, than in proportion 
to the actual extent of the evil. 

' If you look to any department of government, or to any 
parish or diocese, that has long been left to the management of 
apathetic or inefficient persons, you will usually find that there 
are few or no complaints ; because complaints having long since 
been found vain, will have long since ceased to be made. Tliere 
will be no great arrears of business undone, and of applications 
unanswered ; because business will not have been brought be- 
fore those who it is known will not transact it; nor applications 
made, to wliich no answer c:*n be hoped for. Abuses, and defects, 
and evils of various kinds, which ought to have been prevented 
or remedied, men will have learned to submit to as to visitations 
of Providence ; having been left without redress till they have 
at length forgotten that any redress is due, or is possible : and 
20* 



234 Of Innovations. [Essay xxiv. 

this stagnation will have come to be regarded as the natural 
state of things. 

' Hence, it will often happen that in a parish for instance, 
where for a long time very little has been done, it will appear at 
first sight as if there were in fact very little to do : the spiritual 
wants of meinPsrs of the Church not appearing to be unattended 
to, because many persons will have ceased to be members of the 
Church, and many others wall be unconscious that they have 
spiritual wants. 

' And in a Church, accordingly, that has been long without 
an efficient government, the want of such government will often 
be very inadequately perceived, from its not even occm-ring to 
men to consider whether the enormous increase of dissent, of 
internal discord, and of indifference to the Church, are evils 
which it comes within the province of a government in any 
degree to prevent or mitigate.' 

"With those who maintain that the present is not the hest 
time, — on account of the violence of contending parties — for 
the restoration of a Church-government, I so far agree, that I 
am convinced it would have been much letter to have taken the 
step several years ago ; before the excitement caused by one of 
those parties had arisen ; and yet better, some years earlier still, 
when the removal of religious disabilities first left the Church 
destitute of any legislature consisting exclusively of its own 
members : and that, again, a still earlier period would have been 
preferable, when considerable attention was for a time attracted 
to a work on the subject, by a person, then, and now, holding 
the office of Archdeacon. 

'But it is far from being sufficient, — as seems to be the 
notion of some persons — to show that the present is not the 
fittest conceivahle occasion for taking a certain step. Besides this, 
it is requisite to show, — not merely that a better occasion may 
be hnagined^ — or that a better occasion is past / — that the 
Sibylhne Books might have been purchased cheaper some time 
ago / — ^but that a more suitable occasion is likely to arise here- 
after : and how soon ; and also, that the mischief which may be 
going on during the intei^al will be more than compensated by 



' This, and another passage in this note, are extracted from Thi 
Ckurch-ffovernment. 



Essay xxiv.] Annotations. 235 

the superior suitableness of that future occasion ; in short, that 
it will have been worth waiting for. And in addition to all this, 
it is requisite to show ajso the probability that when this golden 
opportunity shall arise, men will be more disposed to take ad- 
va7itage of it than they have heretofore appeared to be ; — that 
they will not again fall into apathetic security and fondness for 
indefinite procrastination. 

' This last point is as needful to be established as any ; for it 
is remarkable that those who deprecate taking any step/ws-^ now, 
in these times of extraordinary excitement, did not, on those 
former occasions, come forward to propose taking advantage of 
a comparatively calmer state of things. They neither made 
any call, nor responded to the call made by others. 

' And indeed all experience seems to show — comparing the 
apathy on tlie subject which was so general at those periods, 
with the altered state of feeling now existing, — that a great and 
pressing emergency, and nothing else, will induce men to take 
any step in this matter ; and that a period of dissension and 
perplexing difficulty, is, though not, in itself, the most suitable 
occasion for such a step, yet — constituted as human nature is — • 
the best, because the only occasion on which one can hope that 
it will be taken, A season of famine may liave been, in some 
respects, a bad occasion for altering the corn-laws ; but expe- 
rience showed that nothing less would suffice. 

' When the valley of Martigny, in Switzerland, was threatened 
(a good many years ago) with a frightful deluge from the 
bursting of a lake formed by a glacier which had damned up a 
river, the inhabitants were for some time not sufficiently alarmed 
to take steps for averting the danger, by cutting channels to let 
off the water. They cannot, therefore, be said to have chosen 
the best time for commencing their operations ; for had they 
begun earlier, — as soon as ever the dam was formed — the work 
would have been much easier, and probably all damage would 
have been prevented. As it was, they had to encounter much 
difficulty, and, after all, were but partially successful : for the 
undrained portion of the lake did at length burst the barrier, 
and considerable damage ensued ; perhaps a fourth part of what 
would have taken place had things been left to themselves. 
But they were wise in not deferring their operations yet longer, 
in the hope that matters would mend spontaneously, when they 



236 Of IniKrvatians. [Essay xxiv. 

saw tliat tlie evil was daily increasing. And after having miti- 
gated in a great degree the calamity tliat did ensne, they took 
measures to provide against the like inJuture. 

* Still, however, we must expect to be told by many, that, 
sooner or later, matters will come right spontaneously, if left 
imtouched ;— that, in time, though we cannot tell how soon, a 
period of extraordinary excitement is sure to be sncceeded by 
one of comparative calm. In the meantime it is forgotten at 
what cost such spontaneous restoration of tranquillity is usually 
purchased — how much the fire will have consumed before it 
shall have burnt out of itself. The case is very similar to wliat 
takes place in the natural body : the anguish of acute inflam- 
mation, when left to itself, is succeeded by the calm of a morti- 
fication: a limb is amputated, or drops off; and the body — but 
no longer the whole body — is restored to a temporary ease, at 
the exj^ense of a mutilation. Who can say that -a large propor- 
tion of those who are now irrecoverably alienated from the 
Church, might not have been at this moment sound members 
of it, had timely steps been taken, not by any departure from 
the principles of our Eeformers, but by following more closely 
the track they marked out for us V 

It is true, that whatever is established and already existing 
has a presumption on its side ; that is, the burden of proof lies 
on those who propose a change. No one is called on to bring 
reasons against any alteration, till some reasons have been 
offeredyb/' it. But the deference which is thus claimed for old 
laws and institutions is sometimes extended (through the ambi- 
guity of language — ^tlie use of ' old' for ' ancient') to what are 
called ' the good old times ;' as if the world had formerly been 
older, instead of younger, than it is now. But it is manifest 
that the advantage possessed by old men — that of long expe- 
rience — must belong to the present age more than to any 
preceding. 

Is there not, then, some reason for the ridicule which Bacon 
speaks of, as attaching to those ' who too much reverence old 
times? To say that no changes sliall take place is to talk 
idly. We might as well pretend to control the motions of the 
earth. To resolve that none shall take place except what are 
undesigned and accidental, is to resolve that though a clock 



xxiv.] Annotatlans. 237 

may gain or lose indefinitely, at least we will take care tliat it 
shall never be regulated. 'If time' (to use Bacon's warning 
words) ' alters things to the worse, an4 wisdom and counsel 
shall not alter them to the better, what shall be the end V 

''It were good that inen^ in their innovationSy would follow the 
example of Time itself which indeed innovateth greatly^ hut 
quietly and hy degrees scarce to he perceived.'' 

There is no more striking instance of the silent and im- 
perceptible changes brought about by what is called ' Time/ 
than that of a language becoming dead. To point out tjie 
precise period at which Greek or Latin ceased to be a living 
language, would be as impossible as to say when a man becomes 
old. And much confusion of thought and many important 
practical results arise from not attending to this. For example, 
many persons have never reflected on the circumstance that one 
of the earliest translations of the Scriptures into a vernacular 
tongue was made by the Church of Rome. The Latin Yulgate 
was so called from its being in the vulgar, i. e. the popular 
language then spoken in Italy and the neighbouring countries : 
and that version was evidently made on purpose that the Scrip- 
tures might be intelligibly read by, or read to, the mass of the 
people. But gradually and imperceptibly Latin was superseded 
by the languages derived from it — Italian, Spanish, and French, 
— while the Scriptures were still left in Latin ; and when it was 
j^roposed to translate them into modern tongues, this was 
regarded as a perilous innovation, though it is plain that the 
real innovation was that which had taken place imperceptibly, 
since the very object proposed by the Yulgate-version was, that 
the Scriptures might not be left in an unknown tongue. Yet 
we meet with many among the fiercest declaimers against 
the Church of Home, who earnestly deprecate any the slightest 
changes in our authorized version, and cannot endure even the 
gradual substitution of other words for such as have become 
obsolete, for fear of ' unsettling men's minds.' It never occurs 
to them that it was this very dread that kept the Scrip- 
tm-es in the Latin tongue, when that gradually became a dead 
language. 

It has been suggested in a popular Periodical that if the 



238 Of Innovatloiu. [Essay xxiv. 

mass of tlie People had been lial)itual readers of the Yulgate, 
Latin might have never become a dead language. No doubt, 
if printing had been#in use in those days, and the People 
generally had had as ready access to cheap Bibles as now, 
this would have retarded and modiiied the change of the lan- 
guage. But the case which is adduced as parallel is very far 
from being such : namely, the stability given to ow language 
by the use of our English version. For, it ought not to have 
been forgotten that our country was not, like Italy — sul)ju- 
gated and overrun (subsequently to the translation of the 
Bible) by numerous tribes speaking a different language. As 
it 18, there can indeed be no doubt that our Authorized Ver- 
sion, and our Prayer-book (and, in a minor degree, Shakespere 
and Bacon) have contributed to give some fixedness to our lan- 
guage : but after all, the changes that have actually taken place 
in it are greater than perhaps some persons Avould at iirst sight 
suspect. For, though the words in our Bible and Prayer-book 
which have become wholly obsolete, are but few, the number is 
many times greater, of words which though still in common 
use, have greatly changed their meaning : such as ' conversation,' 

* convenient,' 'carriage,' (Acts, xxi. 15) 'prevent,' 'reason- 
able,' ' lively,' ' incomprehensible,' those most important words 

* shall' and 'will,' and many others.' And words which have 
thus changed their meaning are, of course, much more likely 
to perplex and bewilder the reader, than those entirely out of 
use. These latter only leave him in darkness ; the others mis- 
lead him by a false light. 

Universally, the removal at once of the accumulated eifects 
gradually produced in a very long time, is apt to strike the 
vulgar as a novelty, when, in truth, it is only a restoration of 
things to their original state. 

For example, suppose a clock to lose only one minute and a 
few seconds in the week, and to be left uncorrected for a year ; 
it will then have lost a whole hour ; and any one who then sets 
it right, will appear to the ignorant to have suddenly robbed 
them of that amount of time. 



' See Bishop Hinds on the Authorised Version, and also a most useful little 
Vocabulary of Obsolete Words in our version, by the Rev. Mr. Booker. 



si v.] Annotatio7is. 239 

This case is precisely analogous to that of the change of 
style. Tliere was, in what is called the Julian Calendar (that 
fixed by Julius Csesar), a minute error, which made every fourth 
year a trifle too long ; in the course of centuries the error 
amounted to eleven days, and when, about a century ago, we 
rectified this (as had been done in Eoman Catholic countries a 
century earlier), this mode of reckoning was called ' the new 
style.' The Russians, who still use what is called the ' old style,' 
are now not eleven, but twelve days wrong ; that is, they are 
one day further from the original position of the days of the 
month, as fixed in the time of Julius Caesar : and this they call 
adhering to the Julian Calendar. 

So, also, to reject the religious practices and doctrines that 
have crept in by little and little since the days of the Apostles, 
and thus to restore Christianity to what it was under them., 
appears to the unthinking to be forsaking the old religion and 
bringing in a new.' 

It is to be observed that hurtful changes are often attributed 
to harmless ones ; and apprehensions are entertained that a 
change^ however small, is necessarily a dangerous thing, as 
tending to produce extensive and hurtful innovations. Many 
instances may be found of small alterations being followed by 
great and mischievous ones (' Post hoc ; ergo propter hoc') ; but 
I doubt whether all history can furnish an instance of the 
greater innovation having been, properly speaking, caused by 
the lesser. Of course, the first change will always precede the 
second ; and many mischievous innovations have taken place ; 
but these may often be explained by the too long postponement 
of the requisite changes ; by the neglect of the homely old 
proverb — ' A tile in time saves nine.' A house may stand for 
ages if some very small repairs and alterations are promptly 
made from time to time as they are needed ; whereas if decay 
is suffered to go on unheeded, it may become necessary to pull 
down and rebuild the whole house. The longer any needful 
reform is delayed, the greater and the more difficult, and the 
more sudden, and the more dangerous and unsettling, it will 



^ Bishop Hind's views, in his work on The TJiree Temples, have been censured 
(as he himself had anticipated) as 7iovcl ; though so familiar to the Apostles as to 
Lave tinged all their language ; as in their use of the word ' edify,' &c. 



240 Of Innovations. [Essay xxiv. 

be. And then, perhaps, those who liad caused this delay by 
their pertinacious resistance to any change at all, will point to 
these evils — evils brought on by themselves — in justiUcation of 
their conduct. If they would have allowed a few broken slates 
on the roof to be at once replaced by new ones, the timbers 
would not have rotted, nor the walls, in consequence, leaned, 
nor would the house have thence needed to be demolished and 
rebuilt. 

Most wise, therefore, is Bacon's admonition, to copy the 
great innovator Time, by vigilantly watching for, and promptly 
counteracting, the first small insidious approaches of decay, and 
introducing gradually, from time to time, such small improve- 
ments (individually small, but collectively great) as there may 
be room for, and which will prevent the necessity of violent and 
sweeping reformations. 

^ It is good not to try experiments in States, except the necessity 
he urgent, or the utility evident ', and well to heware, that it 
he the reformation that draweth on the change, and not the 
desire of change that pretendeth the reformation.'' 

It has been above remarked that most men have no desire 
for change, as change, in what concerns the serious business 
of life. True it is, that great and sudden and violent changes 
do take place — that ancient institutions have been recklessly 
overthrown — ^^that sanguinary revolutions have taken place in 
quick succession, and that new schemes, often the most wild and 
extravagant, both in civil and religious matters, have been again 
and again introduced. We need not seek far to find countries 
that have had, within the memory of persons now living, not 
less than nine or ten perfectly distinct systems of Government. 
But no changes of this kind ever originate in the mere love of 
change for its own sake. Never do men adopt a new form of 
government, or a new system of religion, merely from that 
delight in variety which leads them to seek new amusements, 
or to alter the fashion of their dress. They seek changes in 
what relates to serious matters of fundamental importance, only 
tlirough the pressure of severe suffering, or of somji vehement 
want, or, at least, from the perception of some great evil or 
deficiency. Widely as the vulgar are often mistaken as to the 



Essay xxiv.] Annotations. 241 

causes of any distress, or as to the remedies to be sought, the 
distress itself is real, when they aim at any great revolution. 
If an infant beats its nurse, although its acts are as irrational 
as those of a mad dog, you may be assured that it is really in 
pain. And when men are suflering from a famine or pestilence, 
though it is absurd for them to seek to obtain relief by esta- 
blishing a new kind of senate or parliament, or by setting up a 
dictator, or by slaughtering all people of property, still the evil 
itself is real, and is keenly felt ; and it is that,, and not a mere 
love of change, for change-sake, that drives them to take the 
most irrational steps. 

And when evils are really occasioned by absurd and op- 
pressive laws and tyrannical governments, it is right and 
rational to aim at a change, though the changes which an 
infuriated populace does bring about will usually be both ir- 
rational and wrong — will overthrow the good along with the 
evil, and will be pregnant with worse evils than they seek 
to remedy. Tlie ancient despotism of France, detestable as it 
was, did not cause more misery in a century than the Reign of 
Terror did in a year. And, universally, the longer and the 
more grievously any people have been oppressed, the more 
violent and extravagant will be the reaction. And the people 
will often be in the condition of King Lear, going to and fro 
between his daughters, and deprived lii'st of half his attendants, 
then of half the remainder, then of all. 

Hence, though it is true that innovations in important matters 
are never sought through mere love of change for its own sake, 
but for relief from some evil, the danger is not the less, of 
rash and ill-advised innovations ; because evils, greater or less, 
and more or less of imperfection, always do exist in all human 
institutions administered by fallible men. 

And what is more, there is seldom any kind of evil that does 
not admit of a comjjlete and eifectual remedy, if we are careless 
about introducing some different, and, perhaps, greater evil in 
its place. It is seldom very difficult to dam up a stream that 
incommodes us ; only we should remember that it will then 
force for itself a new channel, or else spread out into an 
unwholesome marsh. The evils of contested elections, the 
bribery, the intimidation, and the deception which they often 

11 Q 



242 Cf Innovations. [Essay xxiv. 

give i-ise to, are undeniable ; and they would be completely 
cured by suppressing the House of Commons altogether, or 
making the seats in it hereditary ; but we should not be gainers 
by the exchange. There are evils belonging specifically to a 
pure monarchy, and to an oligarchy, and to a democracy, and 
to a mixed government : and a change in the form of govern- 
ment would always remedy one class of evils, and introduce 
another. And under all governments, civil and ecclesiastical, 
there are evils arising from the occasional incapacity or mis- 
conduct of those to whom power is entrusted ; evils which 
might be at once remedied by introducing the far greater evil 
of anarchy, and leaving every man to ' do as is right in his 
own eyes.' There are inconveniences, again, from being 
governed by fixed laws, which must always bear hard on some 
particular cases ; but we should be no gainers by leaving every 
judge to act like a Turkish cadi, entirely at his own discretion. 
And the like holds good in all departments of life. Tliere are 
careless and inefiicient clergymen : abolish endowments, and 
resort to what is called ' the voluntary system,' and you will 
have no inactive ministers : only, ' preaching' will, as Paley 
observes, ' become a mode of begging :' and a Minister whose 
flock consists of persons all engaged in some one bad practice, 
such as smugglers, rebels, slave-dealers, or wreckers, will 
find that he is a man hired to keep their conscience 
quiet in a wrong cause. This also may be cured by 
prohibiting the ministers receiving any contributions : only, 
this will confine the ministry to men of fortune. And so of 
the rest. 

One of the greatest evils produced by the thorough-going 
Reformer is that the alarm which he excites is the great 
strengthener of the ultra-conservative principle. ' See wdiat we 
shall come to if we listen to these lovers of change !' This is 
one of the infinite number of cases in which evils are brought 
on by their contraries : in short, by a re-action. 

The mass of mankind rush eagerly into whatever extreme 
happens to be the fashion of the day ; like planks floating to 
and fro with the tides. Tliose a few degrees above them see 
and try to avoid an error, but take no precautions against a 
eonti-ary , extreme. ' Dum vitant stulti vitia in contraria 



Essay xxiv.] Annotations. 243 

ciiiTuut.' Tliey are like a mariner sailing and rowing with all 
his might as far as jjossible against a flood-tide, and never 
thinking that an ebb is to come. A wise man always antici- 
pates re-actions, and takes his measures accordingly. But I 
have already dwelt upon this point in the remarks on ' Super- 
stition.' 

It should be remembered, then, that though pure conser- 
vatism is a folly, and though it is true that men do not covet 
innovation, as such, with equal blindness, still there is as much 
folly, and as much danger, in a blindly reformatory principle. 
For though men do not seek a change except when they perceive 
some evil, inconvenience, or imperfection, the thorough-going 
Keformer always will find some — not unreal — gi'ound of com- 
plaint, in the working of every institution. ' Erunt vitia donee 
homines.' And if the house is to be pulled down and rebuilt 
till we have got one that is perfect, and, moreover, that every 
one will think such, we shall be as constantly in brick and 
mortar as if we did delight in pulling down for its own 
Bake. 

And we should remember, also, that ' custom will often blind 
one to the good as well as to the evil effects of any long- 
established system. The agues engendered by a marsh (like 
that ancient one which bore the name and surrounded the city 
of Camarina,) and which have so long been common as to be 
little regarded, may not be its only effects : it may be also a 
defence against an enemy. The Camarinseans having drained 
the swamp, their city became healthy, but was soon after 
besieged and taken. The preventive effects, indeed, whether 
good or evil, of any long-established system are hardly ever 
duly appreciated. But though no law or system, whether 
actually existing or proposed, can be expected to be unexcep- 
tionable, or should have its defects pointed out without any 
notice of corresponding advantages, it is most important to 
examine every measure, whether new or old, and to try is 
on its intrinsic merits ; always guarding against the tendency 
to acquiesce without inquiry in the necessity of any exist- 
ing practice. In short, we should, on the one hand, not 
venture rashly on untrodden paths without a careful survey 
of the country, and, on the other hand, to be on our guard 



2M Of Innovations. [Essay xxiv. 

against folloT\dng, in confident security, tlie track of our own 
footsteps." 

The two kinds of absurdity here adverted to may be compared 
respectively to the acts of two kinds of irrational animals, a 
moth, and a horse. The moth rushes into a flame, and is 
burned : and the horse obstinately stands still in a stable that 
is on fire, and is burned likewise. One may often meet with 
persons of opposite dispositions, though equally unwise, who are 
accordingly prone respectively to these opposite errors : the one 
partaking more of the character of the moth, and the other of 
the horse. 

Bacon's maxim, therefore, is most wise, 'to make a stand 
upon the ancient way, and look about us to discover what is the 
l)est way ;' neither changing at once anything that is established, 
merely because of some evils actually existing, without con- 
sidering whether we can substitute something that is on the 
whole better; nor, again, steadily rejecting every plan or system 
that can be proposed, till one can be found that is open to no 
objections at all. For nothing framed or devised by the wit 
of Man ever was, or can be, perfect ; and therefore to condemn 
and reject everything that is imperfect, and has some evils 
attending on it, is a folly which may lead equally — and indeed 
often has led — to each of two opposite absurdities : either an 
obstinate adherence to what is established, however bad, because 
nothing absolutely unexceptionable can be substituted ; or again, 
a perpetual succession of revolutions till we can establish — 
which is totally impossible — some system completely faultless, 
or so framed as to heep itself in good order. To conceive such 
a system, whether actually existing or ideal, is to be beset by 
the same chimerical hope in human affairs that has misled so 
many speculators in mechanics, — the vain expectation of attain- 
ing the perpetual motion. 

This essay of Bacon's is one of the most instructive and most 
generally useful, ' coming home,' as he himself expresses it, ' to 
men's business and bosoms.' For though few men are likely 
to be called on to take part in the reformation of any public 
institutions, yet there is no one of us but what ought to engage 



* See Appendix E. to Lectures on Political Econ&tny, page 225. 



Essay xxiv.] Annotations. 245 

in the impoi-tant work of ^eZf-reformation. And according to 
the well-known proverb, ' If each would sweep before his own 
door, we should have a clean street.' Some may have more, 
and some less, of dust and other nuisances to sweep away; 
some of one kind and some of another. But those who have 
the least to do, have something to do ; and t\\Qj should feel it 
an encouragement to do it, that they can so easily remedy the 
beginnings of small evils before they have accumulated into a 
great one- 
Begin reforming, therefore, at once: proceed in reforming 
steadily and cautiously, and go on reforming for ever. 



21* 



ESSAY XXV. OF DISPATCH. 

A FEECTED dispatcli is one of the most dangerous things to 
■^-^ business that can be : it is like that which the physicians 
call jDredigestion, or hasty digestion, which is sure to till the 
body full of crudities, and secret seeds of diseases ; therefore, 
measure not dispatch by the time of sitting, but by the advance- 
ment of the business : and as in races it is not the large stride, 
or high lift, that makes the speed, so in business^ the keeping 
close to the matter, and not taking of it too much at once, 
procureth dispatch. It is the care of some, only to come off 
speedily for the time, or to contrive some talse periods of 
business, because' they may seem men of dispatch : but it is one 
thing to abbreviate by contracting, another by cutting off; and 
business so handled at several sittings or meetings goeth com- 
monly backward and forward in an unsteady manner. I knew 
a wise man that had it fox a by-word, when he saw men hasten 
to a conclusion, ' Stay a little, that we may make an end the 
sooner," 

On the other side, true dispatch is a rich thing ; for time is 
the measure of business, as money is of wares ; and business is 
bought at a dear hand where there is small dispatch. The 
Spartans and Spaniards have been noted to be of small dispatch : 
' Mi venga la muerte de Spagna," for then it will be sure to be 
long in coming. 

Give good hearing to those that give the first information in 
business ; and rather direct them in the beginning than inter- 
rupt them in the continuance of their speeches ; for he that is 
put out of his own order will go forward and backward, and be 
more tedious while he waits upon his memory, than he could 
have been if he had gone on in his own course. But sometimes 
it is seen that the moderator is more troublesome than the actor. 

Iterations* are commonly loss of time ; but there is no such 



' Because. That ; in order that. ' The multitude rebuked them, because they 
should hold their peace.' — Matt. xx. 31. 

' Sir Amyas Paulet. * ' May my death come from Spain.' 

* Iteration. Repetition. 

' What means this iteration, woman ?" — Shakespere. 



Essay xxv.] Of Dispatch. 247 

gain of time as to iterate often tlie state of tlie question ; for it 
chasetli awaj many a frivolous speech as it is coming forth. 
Long and curious speeclies are as fit for dispatch as a robe or 
mantle with a long tram is for a race. Prefaces, and passages/ 
and excusations/ and other speeches of reference to the person, 
are great wastes of time ; and though they seem to proceed of* 
modesty, they are bravery.^ Yet beware of being too material' 
wnen there is any impediment or obstruction in men's wills ; 
for pre-occupation of mind ever requireth preface of speech, 
like a fomentation to make the unguent enter. 

Above all things, order and distribution, and singling out of 
parts, is the life of dispatch, so as the distribution be not too 
subtle ; for he that doth not divide will never enter well into 
business, and he that divideth too much will never come out of 
it clearly. To chuse time is to save time ; and an unseason- 
able motion is but beating the air. There be three parts of 
business — the preparation, the debate, or examination, and the 
perfection, — whereof, if you look for dispatch, let the middle 
only be the work of many, and the iirst and last the work of 
few. The proceeding upon somewhat conceived in writing 
doth for the most part facilitate dispatch ; for though it should 
be wholly rejected, yet that negative is more pregnant of di- 
rection than an indefinite, as ashes are more generative than 
dust. 

^ Passages. Introductory approaches. 

* And with his pointed dart 
Explores the nearest passage to her heart.' 
■* Excusationa. JExcuses ; apologies. ' The punishment of his excusations.' — 
Brown. 

^ Of. From. ' I have received of the Lord that which I also delivered unto 
you.' — 1 Cor. xi 23. 

'A blow whose violence grew not o/ fury, not o/" strength ; or q/" strength pro- 
ceeding of fury. — Sidney. 

* Bravery. Boasting. ' For a bravery upon this occasion of power they crowned 
their new king in Dublin.' — Bacon. 

* Material. Full of matter. 

'A material fool.' — Shakespere. 
' His speech even charmed his cares, 
So order'd, so material.'' — Chapman's version of the 14:th Iliad. 



248 Of Dispatch. [Essay 



ANNOTATIONS. 

* Time is the measure of business.^ ^ To chuse time is to 

save time, and utiseasonable motion is hut heating the air J' 

Some persons ^re what is called ' slow and sure :' sure, tliat 
is, in cases that will admit of leisurely deliberation ; though t^y 
require so much time for forming a right judgment, and devising 
right plans, that in cases where promptitude is called for, they 
utterly fail. Buonaparte used to say, that one of the principal 
requisites for a general, was, an accurate calculation of time; 
for if your adversary can bring a powerful force to attack a cer- 
tain post ten minutes sooner than you can bring up a sufficient 
supporting force, you are beaten, even though all the rest of 
your plans be never so good. 

So also, if you are overtaken by an inundation, ten minutes 
spent in deciding on the best road for escaping, may make es- 
cape impossible. • 

Some again, are admirable at a bright thought — a shrewd 
guess — an ingenious scheme hit off on the spur of the nioment, 
but either will not give themselves time for quiet deliberation 
in cases where there is no hurry, or cannot deliberate to good 
purpose, Tliey can shoot flying, but cannot take deliberate aim. 

And some again there are who delay and deliberate, when 
promptitude is essential, and make up for this by taking a hasty 
step when they have plenty of time before them ; or they are 
bold first and prudent afterwards ; first administering the strong 
dose, and then, when the step cannot be re-called, carefully ex- 
amining the patient's tongue and pulse. 

It is worth remarking, that many persons are of such a dis- 
position as to be nearly incapable <ff remaining in doubt on any 
point that is not wholly uninteresting to them. They speedily 
make up their minds on each question, and come to some con- 
clusion, whether there are any good grounds for it or not. 
And judging — as men are apt to do, in all matters — of others, 
from themselves, they usually discredit the most solemn assu- 
rances of any one who professes to be in a state of doubt on 
some question ; taking for granted that if you do not adopt 
their opinion, you must be of the opposite. 



Essay xxv.] Annotations. 249 

Others again there are, who are capable of remaining in 
doubt as long as the reasons on*each side seem exactly halaneed; 
but not otherwise. Such a person, as soon as he perceives any 
— the smallest — preponderance of probability on one side of a 
question, can no more refrain from deciding immediately, 
and with full conviction, on that side, than he could continue 
to stand, after having lost his equilibrium, in a slanting position, 
like the famous tower at Pisa. And he wm, accordingly, be 
disposed to consider an acknowledgment that there are some- 
what the stronger reasons on one side, as equivalent to a con- 
fident decision. 

The tendency to such an error is the greater, from the cir- 
cumstance, that there are so many cases, in practice, wherein 
it is essentially necessary to come to a' practical decision, even 
where there are no sufficient grounds for Reeling J^ully convinced 
that it is the right one. A traveller may be in doubt, and may 
have no means of deciding, with just confidence, which of two 
roads he ought to take ; while yet he must, at a venture, take 
one of them. And the like happens in numberless transactions 
of ordinary life, in which we are obliged practically to make up 
our minds at once to take one course or another, even where 
there are no sutficient grounds for a full conviction of the 
understanding. 

The infirmities above mentioned are those of oi'dinary minds. 
A smaller number of persons, among whom, however, are to be 
found a larger proportion of the intelligent, -are prone to the op- 
posite extreme ; that of not deciding, as long as there are reasons 
to be found on both sides, even though there may be a clear 
and strong preponderance on the one, and even though the case 
may be such as to call for a practical decision. As the one 
description of men rush hastily to a conclusion, and 'trouble 
themselves little about premises, so, the other carefully ex- 
amine premises, and care too little for conclusions. The one 
decide without inquiring, the other inquire without deciding. 

' Beware of heing too material.^ 

On this point I take the liberty of quoting a passage from 
the Elements of Rhetoric : — 

'It is remarked by anatomists that the nutritive quality 



250 Of Disjpatch. [Essay xxv. 

* is not the only requisite in fqpd, — that a certain degree of 
distension of the stomach is required to enable it to act with its 
full powers, — and that it is for this reason hay or straw must 
be given to horses as well as corn, in order to supply the neces- 
sary bulk. Something analogous to this takes place with respect 
to the generality of minds, — which are incapable of thoroughly 
digesting and as^nilating what is presented to them in a very 
small compass. Many a one is capable of deriving that instruc- 
tion from a moderate-sized volume, which he dbuld not receive 
from a very small pamphlet, even more perspicuously written, 
and containing everything that is to the purpose. It is neces- 
sary that the attention should be detained for a certain time on 
the subject; and persons of unphilosophical mind, though they 
can attend to what they read or hear, are unapt to dwell upon it 
in the way of subsequent meditation.' 

' True disjpatch is a rich thing.'' 

It is a rare and admirable thing wdien a man is able both to 
discern which cases admit, and which not, of calm deliberation ; 
and also to be able to meet both in a suitable manner. Such a 
character is most graphically described by Thucydides in his 
account of Themistocles ; who, according to him, was second to 
none in forming his plans on cautious inquiry and calm reflec- 
tion, when circumstances allowed him, and yet excelled most 
men in hitting ofl'some device to meet some sudden emergency : 
[avToo;^edia<yetv Ta 6eovTa^ 

If you cannot find a counsellor who comhines these two kinds 
of qualification (which is a thing not to be calculated on), you 
should, seek for some of each sort; one, to devise and mature 
measures that will admit of delay ; and another, to make prompt 
guesses, and suggest sudden expedients. A bow, such as is 
approved by our modern toxophilites, must be hacked — that is, 
made of two slips of wood glued together : one a very elastic, 
but somewhat hittle wood : the other much less elastic, but 
very tough. The one gives the requisite spring, the other keeps 
it from breaking. If you have two such counsellors as are here 
spoken of, you are provided with a hacked bow. 

And if you yourself are of one of the two above-mentioned 
characters — the slow-hound or the grey-hound — you should 



Essay xxv.] Annotations. 251 

especially provide yourself with an adviser of the opposite class : 
one to give you warning of dangers -and obstacles, and to 
caution you against precipitate decisions, if that be your ten- 
dency ; or one to make guesses, and suggest expedients, if you 
are one of the slow and sure. 

Tliose who are clever [in the proper sense — i. e. quicTc] are 
apt to be so proud of it as to disdain taking<.time for cautious 
inquiry and deliberation ; and those of the opposite class are 
perhaps no less likely to pride themselves on their cautious 
wisdom. But these latter will often, in practice, obtain this 
advantage over those they are opposed to — that they will defeat 
them without direct opposition, by merely asking for postpone- 
ment and reconsideration, in cases where (as Bacon expresses it) 
'not to decide, is to decide.' If you defer sowing afield till 
the seedtime is past, you have decided against sowing it. If 
you carry the motion, that a Bill be read a second time this day 
six months, you have thrown it out. 



ESSAY XX.VI. OF SEEMING WISE. 

TT liatli been an opinion, that the French are wiser than they 
-*- seem, and the Spaniards, seem wiser than they are ; but 
howsoever it be between nations, certainly it is so between man 
and man ; for, as the Apostle saith of godliness, ' Havhig a show 
of godliness, but denying the power thereof," — so certainly 
there are, in points of wisdom and sufHciency," that do nothing 
or little, very solemnly, Magno conatu nugas.^ It is a ridiculous 
thing, and fit for a satire to persons of judgment, to see what 
shifts these formalists have, and what prospectives* to make 
eupei-ficies to seem body that hath depth and bulk. Some are 
■ 60 close and reserved, as they will not show their wares but by 
a dark light and seem always to keep back somewhat; and 
when they know within themselves they speak of that they do 
not well know, would nevertheless seem to others to know of 
that which they may not well speak. Some help themselves 
with countenance and gesture, and are wise by signs ; as Cicero 
eaitli of Piso,* that when he answered him, he fetched one of his 
brows up to his forehead, and bent the other down to his chin ; 
^Respondes, altero ad frontem sublato, altero ad mentum de- 
presso supercilio, crudelitatem tibi non placere.' Some think 
to bear* it by speaking a great word, and being peremptory ; 
and go on, and take by admittance that which they cannot 
make good. Some, whatsoever is beyond their reach, will seem 
to despise, or make light of it, as impertinent' or curious,^ and 
so would have their ignorance seem judgment. Some are never 



' 2 Timothy. iiL 5. 

"^ Sufficiencjf. Ability ; adequate power. ' Our sufficiency is of God.' — 2 Cor. 
iiL 5. 

^ Trifles with great effort. 

* Prospectives. Perspective glasses. 

' The speke of Alhazen and Vitellon. 
Of queinte mirrours, and o{ prospectives.' — Cliaticer. 
» In Pis. 6. 

* Bear. To manage ; to contrive. 

' We'll direct lier how 'tis best to hear it.' — Shahespere. 
' Impertinent. Irrelevant. 

'Without the which, this story 
Were most impertinent.' — Shakespere. 

* Curious. Over-nice. See page 80. 



Essay xxvi.] Annotations. 253 

"without a. diiference/ and commonly by amusing men with a 
subtlety, blanch'' the matter ; of whom A-. Gellius saith, ' Homi- 
nem delirum, qui verborum minutiis rerum frangit pondera.'* 
Of which kind also Plato, in his Protagoras^* bringeth in Pro- 
dicus in scorn, and maketh him make a speech that consisteth 
of distinctions from the beginning to the end. Generally, such 
men, in all deliberations, find ease to be of the negative side, 
and aifect a credit to object and foretell difficulties ; for when 
propositions are denied, there is an end of them ; but if they be 
allowed, it requireth a new work ; which false point of wisdom 
is the bane of business. To conclude, there is no decaying 
merchant, or inward beggar,^ hath so many tricks to uphold the 
credit of their wealth, as these empty persons have to maintain 
the credit of their sufficiency. Seeming wise men may make 
shift to get opinion ; but let no man chuse them for employ- 
ment ; for, certainly, you were better take for business a man 
somewhat absurd than over-formal. 



ANNOTATIONS. 

men may Tndke shift to get opinion.'' 

There is a way in which some men seem, to themselves, and 
often to others also, to be much wiser trnm they are ; by acting 
as a wise man does, only on wrong occasions, and altogether 
under different circumstances. Such a man has heard that it 
is a wise thing to be neither too daring nor too timid ; neither 
too suspicious nor too confiding ; too hasty nor too slow, &c., 



' Difference. A subtle distinction. 

' An absolute gentleman, full of most excellent differences.' — Shahespere. 

' Blanch. To evade. ' A man horribly cheats his own soul, who upon any pre- 
tence whatever, or under any temptation, forsakes or blancfies the true principles 
of religion.' — Goodman's Conference. 

^ ' A senseless man who fritters away weighty matters by trifling with words.' 
(This expression not in Aulus Gellius. A passage like it occurs in Quintilian — ix. 1.) 

* Plato, Protag. i. 337. 

* Inward beggar. One seo'etly a hankrupt. 

' To the sight unfold 
His secret gems, and all the inward gold.' — Lansdowne. 



254: Of seeming ^Vise. [Essay xxvi. 

and lie ventures and holds back, trusts and distrusts, hastens 
and delays, spends and spares, &c., just in the same degree that 
a wise man does, — only, he is venturesome where there is real 
dangei-, and cautious where there is none ; hasty where there is 
no cause, and dilatory when everything turns on dispatch ; 
trusting those unworthy of confidence, and suspicious of the 
trustworthy ; parsimonious towards worthy objects, and profuse 
towards the worthless ; t%c. 

Such a character may be called ' the reflection of a wise man,' 
He is the figure of a wise man shown by a mirror ', which is an 
exact representation, except that it is left-handed. 

Tlie German child's-story of Hans und Grettel^ like many 
other childish tales, contains, under a surface of mere foolery, 
an instructive picture of real life. Hans stuck a knife in his 
sleeve, having been told that was the proper place for the 
needle ; and put a kid in his pocket, because that was the place 
for a knife, &c. 

It may be said, almost without qualification, that true wisdom 
consists in the ready and accurate perception of analogies. 
Without the former quality, knowledge of the past is unin- 
structive ; without the latter, it is deceptive. 

One way in which many a man aims at and pretends to 
wisdom, who ' has it not in him,' is this : he has heard that 
' the middle course is always the best ;' that ' extremes are to be 
avoided,' &c. ; and so he endeavours in all cases to keep at an 
equal distance from th# most opposite parties. He will never 
quite agree, nor very widely disagree with either : and thus, as 
almost always each party is right in something, he misses the 
truth on both sides ; and while afraid of being guided by either 
party, he is in fact guided by both. His mimic wisdom con- 
Bists in sliding alternately towards each extreme. But if your 
orbit be a true circle, independent of the eccentric elliptical 
orbits of others, this will make sundry nodes Avith theirs ; some- 
times falling within and sometimes without the same eccentric 
orbit. That is, in some points you will approach nearer to the 
one than to the other ; in some you will wholly agree with one 
party, and in some with another; in some you will differ 
equally from both ; and in some you will even go further from 
the one party than the opposite one does. For, true wisdom 
does not depend on another's extravagance and folly. The 



Essay xxvi.] A7inotatwns. 255 

varieties of human error have no power to fix the exact place 
of truth. 

Another exemphfication of the goklen mean upon which this 
seeming wise man prides himself, is the adoption of the conclu- 
sion that where a great deal is said, sometliing must be true ; 
imagining that he is showing a most judicious and laudable 
caution in believing only part of what is said, — doing what is 
called 'splitting the ditference.' This is the wisdom of the 
clown, who thinks he has bought a great bargain of a Jew, 
because he has beat down the price fi-om a guinea to a crown 
for some article that is not really worth a groat. 

Another of these pretenders to being, or being thought to 
be, wise, prides himself on what he calls his consistency, — on 
his never changing his opinions or plans ; which, as long as 
Man is fallible, and circumstances change, is the wisdom of one 
either too dull to detect his mistakes, or too obstinate to own 
them. 

Another, having been warned that 'wisdom and wit' are not 
the same thing, makes it a part of wisdom to distrust every- 
tliing that can possibly be regarded as witty ; not having judg- 
ment to perceive the combination, when it occurs, of wit with 
sound reasoning. The ivy-wreath conceals from his view" the 
point of the Thyrsus. His is not the wisdom that can laugh 
at wdiat is ludicrous, and, at the same time, preserve a clear 
discernment of sound and unsound reasoning. 

Again — Some of these seeming wise* men pride themselves 
on their scorn for all systematic knowledge, and on their 
reliance on what they call common sense and experience. They 
depend on their ' experience' and their ' common-sense' for every- 
thing, and are continually obtruding what may be called the 
pedantry of experience and common sense on the most abstruse 
subjects. They meet all scientific and logical argument with — 
'Common sense tells me I am right,' and — 'My every-day's 
experience confirms me in the opinion I have formed.' If they 
are spoken to of Political Economy, they will immediately 
reply, 'Ah, I know nothing of the dreams of Political Economy' 
(this is the very phrase I have heard used) — ' I never studied 
it — I never troubled myself about it ; but there are some points 
npon which I have made up my mincl, such as the question of 
free trade and protection, and poor-laws.' 'I do not profess' 



256 Of seeming Wise. [Essay xxvi." 

— a man will perhaps say — ' to know anything of Medicine, or 
Pharmacy, or Anatomy, or any of those things ; but I know by 
experience that so and so is wholesome for sick people.' 

In former times men knew by experience that the earth 
stands still, and the sun rises and sets. Common sense taught 
them that there could be no antipodes, since men could not 
stand with their heads downwards, like flies on the ceiling. 
Experience taught the King of Bantam that water can never 
become solid. And — to come to the case of human aflairs — ■ 
the experience and common sense of the most intelligent of the 
Roman historians, Tacitus, taught him that for a mixed govern- 
ment to be established, combining the elements of royalty, 
aristocracy, and democracy, would be next to impossible ; and 
that if it were established, it must speedily be dissolved. 
Yet, had he lived to the present day, he would have learned 
that the establishment and continuance of such a form of 
government was not impossible. So much for experience ! 
The experience of these wise men resembles tlie learning 
of a man who has turned over the pages of a great many 
books without ever having learned to read ; and their so-called 
* common sense' is often, in reality, nothing else than common 
prejudice. 

Yet these very persons pass for wise, or, as Bacon expresses 
it, ' get opinion,' by the oracular decisions they are continually 
pronouncing on the most difficult scientiiic questions. For 
instance, decisions on questions concerning taxation, tithes, the 
national debt, the poor laws, the wages which labourers earn or 
ought to earn, the comparative advantages of diiferent modes 
of charity, and numberless other questions of Political Economy, 
are boldly pronounced by them, while not only ignorant, but 
professedly ignorant, and designing to continue so, of the whole 
subject ; neither having, nor pretending to have, nor seeking for, 
any fixed principles by which to regulate their judgment on each 
point. That gentleman equals them in wisdom, while certainly 
surpassing them in the modesty of his doubt, who, on being 
asked whether he could play on the violin, made answer that 
he really did not know whether he could or not, because he had 
never tried. 

It is somewhat remarkable that this claim to be thought 
wise, founded on the adherence to so-called common sense, is 



Essay xxvi.] Annotations. 257 

much more generally allowed than seems quite consistent with 
the universal, though unconscious, and often unwilling, testi- 
mony of mankind — that systematic knowledge is jDreferable to 
conjectural judgments, and that common sense is only our 
second-hii^i guide ; a testimony borne in the fact that the sailor, 
the architect, the physician, and every other practitioner, each 
in his own dej^artment, gives the preference to unassisted common 
sense only in those points where he himself has nothing else to 
trust to, and invariably resorts to the rules of art wherever he 
possesses the knowledge of them. But most people are apt to 
give credit for wisdom to those, not whose views are, on the 
whole, most reasonable, but those whose common sense consists 
in common notions, and who are free froiji all errors, except 
vulgar errors. 

Another mode in which men set up for being wise is, by 
being fastidious. Tliey are so excessively acute at detecting 
imperfections, that in looking at a peacock's train, they would 
fix on every spot where the feathers were worn, or the colours 
faded, and see nothing else. . 

Again — It is a characteristic of some of these seeming wise 
men, that not only are 'little things great' to them, as the 
poet says they are to ' little men,' but great things are little to 
them. 

As to the tricks by^ which men (in the modern phrase) 'puff 
themselves,' they might have been introduced by Bacon in the 
essay ' On Cunning.' But it is worth noticing, that those who 
assume an imposing demeanor, and seek to puff themselves off 
for something beyond what they are (and often succeed), are, 
not unfrequently, as much uiider-voXedi by sOme, as they are 
over-rated by others. For, as a man (according to what Bacon 
says in the essay ' On Discourse'), by keeping back some know- 
ledge which he is believed to possess, may gain credit for know- 
ing something of which he is really ignorant, so, if he is once 
or twice detected in pretending to know what he does not, he 
is likely to be set down as a mere pretender, and as ignorant of 
what he does know. 

' Silver gilt will often pass 
Either for gold or else for brass.'* 



' See Proverbs and Precepts, as Copy -Pieces for K'ational Schools. 

22* B 



258 Of seeming Wise. [Essay xxvi. 

* T'ou were letter take for husiness a man somewhat absurd 
than overfqrmaV 

By 'absurd' Bacon probably means what we express by 
* inconsiderate ;' what the French call ' etourdi,' 

The 'over-formal' often impede, and sometimes frnstrate, 
business by a dilatory, tedious, circuitous, and (what in col- 
loquial language is called) fussy way of conducting the simplest 
transactions. They have been compared to a dog, which cannot 
lie down till he has made three circuits round the spot. 



ESSAY XXVIL OF FRIENDSHIP. 

IT had been hard for him that spake it, to have put more 
truth and untruth together in a few words, than in that speech, 
' Whosoever is dehghted in soHtude, is either a wikl beast or a 
god ;" for it is most true, that a natural and secret hatred and 
aversation towards^ society, in any man, hath somewhat of the 
savage beast ; but it is most untrue, that it should have any 
character at all of the divine nature, except' it proceed, not out 
of a pleasure in solitude, but out of a love and desire to sequester 
a man's self for a higher conversation ;^ such as is found to 
have been falsely and feignedly in some of the heathens — as 
Epimenides, the Candian ; Numa, tlie Koman ; Empedocles, the 
Sicilian ; and Apollonius, of Tyana ; and truly, and really, in 
divers of the ancient hermits and holy fathers of the Church. 
But little do men perceive what solitude is, and how far it ex- 
tendeth ; for a crowd is not company, and faces are but a 
gallery of pictures, and talk bu^ a tinkling cymbal, where there 
is no love. The Latin adage meeteth with it a little : ' Magna 
civitas, magna solitudo,'" — because in a great town friends are 
scattered, so that there is not that fellowship, for the most part, 
which is in less neighbourhoods ; but we may go farther, and 
affirm most truly, that it is a mere* and miserable solitude to 
want true friends, without which the world is but a wilderness ; 
and, even in this scene also of solitude, whosoever, in the frame 
of his nature and affections, is unfit for friendship, he taketh it 
of the beast, and not from humanity.' 

A principal fruit of friendship is the ease and discharge of 



' Aristotle, Eth., B. 8. 

* Aversation towards. Aversion to. ' There is such a general aversation in 
human nature towards contempt, that there is scarcely anything more exasperating.' 
— Government of the Tongue. 

' Except. Unless. ' Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom 
of God.' — John iii. 3. 

* Conversation. Course of life. ' What manner of persons ought we to be in 
all holy conversation and godliness.' — 2 Fct. iii. 

* ' A great city, a great solitude.' 
' Mere. Absolute. See ' Merely,' page 22. 

^ Humanity. Human nature. ' Look to thyself; reach not beyond humanity. 
— Sir Philip Sidney, 



260 Of Fnenchhip. [Essay xxvii. 

the fulness of tlie heart, which passions of all kinds do caiise 
and induce. AVe know diseases of stoppings and suffocations 
are the most dangerous in the body ; and it is not much other- 
wise in the mind : you may take sarza' to open the liver, steel 
to open the spleen, flower of sulphur for the lungs, castoreum 
for the brain ; but no receipt openeth the heart but a true 
friend, to whom you may impart griefs, joys, fears, hopes, sus- 
picions, counsels, and whatsoever lieth upon the heai-t to oppress 
it, in a kind of civil shrift or confession. 

It is a strange thing to observe how high a rate great kings 
and monarchs do set upon this fruit of friendship whereof we 
speak, — so great, as'' they purchase it many times at the hazard 
of their own safety and greatness : for pi-inces, in regard of the 
distance of their fortune from that of their subjects and servants, 
cannot gather this fruit, except, to make themselves capable 
thereof, they raise some persons to be as it were companions, 
and almost equals to themselves, which many times sorteth' to 
inconvenience. The modern languages give unto such persons 
the name of favourites, or privadoes, — as if it were matter of 
grace or conversation ; but the Koman name attaineth the true 
use and cause thereof, naming them ' participes curarum ;'* for 
it is that which tieth the knot : and we see plainly that this 
hath been done, not by weak and passionate princes only, but 
by the wisest and most politic that ever reigned, who have often- 
times joined to themselves some of their servants, whom both 
themselves have called friends, and allowed others likewise to 
call them in the same manner, using the word which is received 
bet^v^en private men. 

L. Sylla, when he commanded Rome, raised Pompey, after 
surnamed The Great, to that height that Pompey vaunted him- 
self for Sylla's over-match ; for when he had carried the consul- 
ship for a friend of his, against the pursuit of Sylla, and that 
Sylla did a little resent thereat, and began to speak great, 
Pompey turned upon him again, and in effect bade him be 
quiet ; for that more men adored the sun rising than the sun 
setting.^ With Julius Caesar, Decimus Brutus had obtained 

* Sarza. Sarsaparilla. ' Sarza is both a tree and an herb.' — Ainswortk. 

* As. That. See page 23. 

' Sorteth. To result ; to issve in. 

' Sort how it will, 
I shall have gold for all.' — Shal-espere. 

* Participators in our cares. * Pint. Vit. Pmnp. 19. 



Essay xxvii.] Of Friendship. 261 

that interest, as lie set him down in his testament for heir in re- 
mainder after his nephew; and this was the man that had power 
with liini to draw liim forth to his death ; for when Caesar 
would have discharged the senate, in regard of some ill presages, 
and especially a dream of Calpurnia, this man lifted him gently 
by the arm out of his chair, telling him he hoped he woidd not 
dismiss the senate till his wife had dreamed a better dream ;' 
and it seemed his favour was so great, as Ant^^nius, in a letter, 
which is reeited verbatim in one of Cifcero's Philippics, called 
him ' w?^^6W,' witeh, — as if he had enchanted Cffisav.'^ Augustus 
raised Agrippa, though of mean birth, to that height, as,^ when 
he consulted with Ma3cenas about the marriage of his daughter 
Julia, Msecenas took the liberty to tell him, that he must either 
marry liis daughter to Agrippa, or take away his life, — there 
was no third way, he had made him so great. With Tiberius 
Coesar, Sejanus had ascended to that height as they two were 
termed and reckoned as a pair of friends. Tiberius, in a letter 
to him, saitli, ' Hsec pro ami<^tia nostra non oeeulta\d ;'* and 
the whole senate dedicated an altar to Friendship, as to a 
goddess, in res})ect of the great dearness^ of friendship between 
them two. The like, or more, was between Septimus Severus 
and Plautianus ; for he forced his eldest son to inarry the 
daughter of Plautianus, and would often maintain Plautianus 
in doing afironts to his son ; and did write also, in a letter to the 
senate, by these words," ' I love the man so well, as I wish ~ he 
may over-live'' me.' Kow if these princes had been as a Trajan, 
or a Mareus Aurelius, a man might have thought that this had 
proceeded of* an abundant goodness of nature : but being men 
so wise, of such strength and severity of mind, and so extreme 
lovers of themselves, as all these were, it proveth, most plainly, 
that they found their own felicity, though as great as ever hap- 
pened to mortal men, but»as a half piece, except they might 
have a friend to make it entire ; and yet, which" is more, they 



^ Plut. Vit. J. Ctes. 64. 
■" Cic. Philip, xiii. 11. ^ As. That. See page 23. 

* ' On account of our friendship, I Imve not concealed these things.' — Tacit, 
Ann. iv. IQ. 

* Dearness. Fondness. 'He must profess all the dearne.^s and friendship.' — 
South. ^ Dion Cass. Ixxv. 

' Overlive. Survive. ' Musidorus, who showed a mind not to overlive Prorus, 
prevailed.' — Sir P. Sidney. ^ Of. From. See page 247. 

» Which. What.— Chaucer. 



262 Of Friendship. [Essay xxvii. 

were princes that liad wives, sons, nephews, yet all these could 
not supply the comfort of friendship. 

It is not to be forgotten what Comineus observcth of his 
first master, Duke Charles the Hardy — namely, that he would 
communicate^ his secrets with none ; and, least of all, those 
secrets which troubled him most. "Whereupon he goetli on, 
and saith, that towards his latter time, that closeness did impair 
and a little perish'^ his understanding. Surely Comineus might 
have made the same judgment also, if it had pleased him, of 
his second master, Louis XI., whose closeness was indeed his 
tormentor. The parable of Pythagoras is dark, but true, ' Cor 
ne edito' — eat not the heart." Certainly, if a man would give 
it a hard phrase, those that want friends to open themselves 
unto, are cannibals of their own hearts ; but one thing is most 
admirable (wherewith I will conclude this first fruit of friendship), 
which is, that this communicating of a man's self to his friend, 
works two contrary effects, for it redoubleth joys, and (iutteth 
griefs in halfs ; for there is no man that imparteth his joys to 
his friend, but he joyeth the more, and no man that imparteth 
his griefs to his friend, but he grieveth the less. So that it is, 
in truth, of operation upon a man's mind of like virtue as the 
alchymists use to attribute to their stone for man's body, that 
it worketh all contrary efi'ects, but still to the good and benefit 
of nature. But yet, without praying in aid' of alchymists, there 
is a manifest image of this in the ordinary course of nature ; for, 
in bodies, union strengtheneth and cherisheth any natural action, 
and, on the other side, weakeneth and dulleth any violent im- 
pression — and even so is it of" minds. 



^ Communicate unth. Comnmnicate to; impart to. 'lie communicated those 
thoughts only with the Lord Digby.' — Clarendon. 

* Perish. To cause to decay ; to destroy. 

' Tliy flinty heart, more hard than they, 
INIight in tlij^ palace perish, Margaret.' — Shakespei-e. 
' Plutarch, De Educat. Pner. 17. 

* Pray in aid. To be an advocate for. (A term in law for calling in one to 
help who has interest in a cause.) 

'You shall find 
_A conqueror that will pray in aid for kindness. 
When he for grace is kneeled to.' — Skakespere. 
' Of. With regard to. 

' This quarrel is not now of fame and tribute. 
But for your own repiiblick.' — Ben Jonson. 



Essay xxvii.] Of Friendship, 263 

The second fruit of friendship is healthful and sovereign for 
the understanding, as the first is for the affections ; for friend- 
ship maketh indeed a fair day in the affections from storm and 
tempests, but it maketh daylight in the understanding, out of 
darkness and confusion of thoughts. Neither is this to be 
understood only of faitliful counsel, which a man receiveth from 
his friend ; but before you come to that, certain it is, that who- 
soever' hath his mind fraught with many thoughts, his wits and 
imderstanding do clarify and break up, in the communicating 
and discoursing with another; he tosseth his thoughts more 
easily — he marshalleth them more orderly — he seetli how they 
look when they are turned into words — finally, he waxeth' wiser 
than lumself ; and that more by an hour's discourse than by a 
day's meditation. It was well said by Themistocles to the king 
of Persia, ' That speech was like cloth of Arras, opened and 
put abroad'^ — whereby the imagery doth appear in figure, 
whereas in thoughts they lie but as in packs. Neither is this 
second fruit of friendship, in opening the understanding, re- 
strained* only to such friends as are able to give a man counsel 
(they indeed are best), but even without that a man learneth of 
himself, and bringeth his own thoughts to light, and whetteth 
his wits as against a stone, which itself cuts not. In a word, a 
man were* better relate himself to a statue or picture than to 
suffer his thoughts to pass in smother.* 

Add now, to make this second fruit of friendship complete, 
that other point which lieth more open, and falleth within 

' Whosoever. Whoever. ' Whosoever liath Christ for his friend shall be sure 
of counsel ; and whosoever is his own friend will be sure to obey it.' — South. 

* "Wax. To grow ; to becmne. 

' Nature, crescent, does not grow alone 
In thews and bulk ; but as this temple waxes, 
The inward service of the mind and soul 
Grows wide withal.' — Shakespere. 
' Plut. Vlt. Themist. 28. 

* Restrained. Limited; confined; restricted. ' Upon what ground can a man 
promise himself a future repentance who cannot promise himself a futurity ; whose 
life is so restrained to the present that it cannot secure to itself the reversion of 
the very next moment' — South. 

'Were. Had. 

' I were best not call,' — Shakespere. 

* Smother (not used as a noun). A state of being stifled. 

' Then must I from the smoke into the smother ; 
From tyrant duke unto a tyrant brother.' — Shakespere. 



264: Of FriendsJivp. [Essaj xxvii. 

vulgar' observation — which is faithful counsel from a friend. 
Heraclitus saith well, in one of his enigmas, ' Dry light is ever 
the best ;'^ and certain it is, that the light that a man receiveth 
by counsel from another is drier and purer than that which 
Cometh from his own understanding and judgment, which is 
ever infused and drenched in his affections and customs. So 
as there is as much difference between the counsel that a friend 
giveth, and that a man giveth himself, as there is between the 
counsel of a friend and of a flatterer; for there is no such 
flatterer as is a man's self, and there is no such remedy against 
flattery of a man's self as the liberty of a friend. Counsel is 
of two sorts ; the one concerning manners, the other concern- 
ing business : for the first, the best preservative to keep the 
mind in health is the faithful admonition of a friend. The 
calling of a man's self to a strict account is a medicine some- 
times too piercing and corrosive; reading good books of morality 
is a little flat and dead ; observing our faults in others is some- 
times improper for our case ; but the best receipt (best, I say, 
to work, and best to take) is the admonition of a friends It is 
a strange thing to behold what gross errors and extreme absur- 
dities many (especially of the greater sort) do commit, for want 
of a friend to tell them of them, to the great damage both of 
their fame and fortune : for, as St. James^ saith, they are as 
men 'that look sometimes into a glass, and presently foi-get 
their own shape and favour." As for business, a man may think, 
if he will, that two eyes see no more than one ; or, that a 
gamester seeth always more than a looker-on : or, that a man 
in anger is as wise as he that hath said over the four-and-twenty 
letters ; or, that a musket may be shot ofi" as well upon the arm 
as upon a rest : and such other fond^ and high imaginations, to 
think himself all in all : but when all is done, the help of good 
counsel is that which setteth business straight ; and if any man 
think that he will take counsel, but it shall be by pieces; 



Vulgar. C<ymmon ; general; public. 

' Most sure, and vulgar ; every one hears that.' — Shakespere. 
Ap. Stop. Serm. v. 120. ' Jmnes i. 23. 

' Favour. Countenance. ' I have surely seen him ; YA?, favour is familiar to me.' 
' Fond. Foolish ; silly ; weak. 

' 'Tis fond to wail inevitable strokes, 
As 'tis to laugh at them.' — Shakespere. 



Essay xxvii.] Of Fnendsliip. -265 

asking counsel in one business of one man, and in another 
business of another man ; it is as well (that is to say, better, 
perhaps, than if he asked none at all), but he runneth two 
dangers ; one, that he shall not be faitlifully counselled — for it 
is a rare thing, except it be from a perfect and entire friend, to 
have counsel given, but such as shall be bowed and crooked' to 
some ends which he hath that giveth it ; the other, that he shall 
have counsel given, hurtful and unsafe (though with good 
meaning) and mixed partly of mischief and partly of remedy — 
even as if you would call a physician, that is thought good for 
the cure of the disease you complain of, but is unacquainted 
with your body, — and therefore, may put you in a way for 
present cure, but overthroweth your health in some other kind, 
and so cure the disease, and kill the patient : but a friend, that 
is wholly acquainted with a man's estate,'' will beware, by farther- 
ing any present business, how he dasheth upon other incon- 
venience, — and, therefore, rest not upon scattered counsels, for 
they w^ill rather distract and mislead than settle and direct. 

After these tw^o noble fruits of friendship (peace in the aifec- 
tions and support of the judgment), folio wetli the last fruit, 
which is, like the pomegranate, full of many kernels — ^I mean, 
aid and bearing a part in all actions and occasions. Here, the 
best way to represent to life the manifold use of friendship, is 
to cast and see how many things there are wdiich a man cannot 
do himself ; and then it will appear that it was a sparing speech 
of the ancients, to say, ' that a friend is another himself,' for that 
a friend is far more than himself. Men have their time, and 
die many times in desire of some things which they principally 
take to heart ; the bestowing of a child, the tinishing of a work, 
or the like. If a man have a true friend, he may rest almost 
secure that the care of those things will continue after him ; 
so that a man hath, as it were, two lives in his desires. A 
man hath a body, and that body is confined to a place ; but 
where friendship is, all offices of life are, as it were, granted to 
him and his deputy ; for he may exercise them by his friend. 
How many things are there which a man cannot, with any 



* Crook. To -pervert. See page 218. 
' Estate. State ; condition ; circumstances. 
' His letter there 
Will show you his estate.' — Shakespere. 

23 



266 Of Friendship. [Essay xxvii. 

face or comeliness say or do himself? A man can scarce allege 
jbis own merits with modesty, much less extol them ; a man 
cannot sometimes brook to sui3plicate or beg, and a number of 
the like : but all these things are graceful in a friend's mouth, 
which are blushing in a man's own. So, again, a man's person 
hath many proper' relations which he cannot put off. A man 
cannot speak to his son but as a father ; to his wife but as 
a husband : to his enemy but upon terms : whereas a friend may 
speak as the case requires, and not as it sorteth^ with the 
person. But to enumerate these things were endless : I have 
given the rule, where a man cannot fitly play his own part ; if 
he have not a friend, he may quit the stage. 

ANTITHETA ON FRIENDSHIP. 
Pro. Contra. 

' Pessima solitudo, noa veras habere ' Qui amieitias arctas copulat, novas 

amicitias. necessitates sibi imponit. 

' The worst solitude is to have no real ' He who forms dose friendships, itn- 

^riendships.' poses on himself new duties.' 

'Digna malae fidei ultio, amicitiis ' Animi imbecilli est, partiri fortunam. 

privarL ' It is the mark of a feeble mind to 

' To be deprived of friends is a ft go shares in one's fortune with another.' 
reward of faithlessness.' 



ANNOTATIONS. 

*It had heen hard for him that spake it to have put more truth 
and untruth together in feio words than in that speech^ — 
* WJiosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild heast or 
a god.'' 

Aristotle had been so unduly and absurdly worshipped before 
Bacon's time, that it was not inexcusable to be carried away by 
the ebb-tide, and unduly to disparage him. But, in truth, Aristotle 
(for it is of him Bacon is speaking) was quite right in saying 



Propef. Peculiar. 

' Faults jjroper to himself.' — Shakespere. 
'Sort. To suit; to fit. 

'For different styles, with different subjects sort. 
As several garbs with country, town, and court.' — Pope. 



Essay xxvii.] Annotations. 267 

that to Man, such as man is, friendship is indispensable to hap- 
piness ; and that one who has no need, and feels no need of it, 
mnst be either much above hnman nature, or much below it.' 
Aristotle does not presume to say that no Being can exist so 
exalted as to be wholly independent of all other Beings, and to 
require no sympathy, nor admit of it ; but that such a Being 
must be a widely different Being from Man, 

' It is most untnoe, that it should have any character at all of 
divine nature.^ 

Well might Bacon doubt, or deny, that incapacity for friend- 
ship could assimilate Man to the divine nature. We do not 
find that true Christians — those whom Peter describes as ' par- 
takers of a divine nature through the great and precious promises 
given unto them" — become less and less capable of friendship 
in proportion as they, in any measure, attain to that resemblance 
to their divine Master, which is yet to be their perfection and 
their happiness when they shall see Him as He is ;' and after 
which they are now, here below, continually striving. We do 
not find that, as they increase in universal charity, particular 
friendships are swallowed up in it, or that any progress to higher 
and more exalted christian attainment makes a partial regard 
towards one good man more than another, unworthy of them, 
and too narrow a feeling for them to entertain. Far from it, 
indeed : it is generally observed, on the contrary, that the best 
Christians, and the fullest, both of hrothevly love towards all 
' who are of the household of faith,'' and of universal tefiderness 
and benevolence towards all their fellow-creatures, are also the 
warmest and steadiest in their friendships. 

Nor have we any reason to believe that in the future state 
of blessedness and glory, when the saint is indeed made perfect, 
any part of his perfection will consist in being no longer 
capable of special individual friendship. There are many per- 
sons, however, who believe that it will be so ; and this is one of 
the many points in which views of the eternal state of the lieirs 



* "O d^ fir] dvvufievoQ Koivuvelv tj fiTjdtv deojievog 61! avTupKsiav, ovdev fiipog 
voleu^- uGTE 7/ djjpiov ^ deog.' — ^Arist. Politics, Book i. Bacon probably quoted 
from a Latin translation: ' Homo solitarius, aut Deus aut bestia.' 

^ 2 Pet. i. 4. M John iii. 2. 



268 Of Friendshij). [Essay xxvii. 

of salvation are f endered more uninteresting to our feelings, and 
consequently, more uninviting, than there is any need to make 
them. Many suppose that when we have attained to that 
eternal state, the more concentrated and limited aifection will 
be lost in brotherhood with that ' multitude which no man can 
number, redeemed out of every nation, and kindred, and people.' 
But if we find, as we do find, that private friendship does not 
interfere with christian brotherhood, nor with universal bene- 
volence on eartli, why should it do so in heaven?. 

But ' we have no more decisive proof than this :' no one can sup- 
pose that a Christian in his glorified state will be more exalted 
than his great Master while here on earth ; from Him we must 
ever remain at an immeasurable distance : we hope, indeed, to 
be free from the sufl:erings of our blessed Lord in his state of 
humiliation here below ; but never to equal his perfections. 
Yet He was not incapable of friendship. He certainly loved, 
indeed, all mankind, more than any other man ever did ; since 
(as Paul says) '■ while we were yet enemies. He died for us ;' 
He loved especially the disciples who constantly followed Him ; 
but even among the Apostles, He distinguished one as more 
peculiarly and privately \\\Qfrie7id — John was the disciple whom 
Jesus loved.'' Can we then ever be too highly exalted to be 
capable of friendship ? 

'I am convinced, on the contrary, that the extension and 
perfection of friendship will constitute great part of the future 
happiness of the blest. Many have lived in various and distant 
ages and countries, perfectly adapted (I mean not merely in 
their being generally estimable, but in the agreement of their 
tastes, and suitableness of dispositions) for friendship with each 
other, but who, of course, could never meet in this w^orld. 
Many a one selects, when he is reading history, — a truly-pious 
Christian, most especially in reading sacred history, — some one 
or two favourite characters, with whom he feels that a personal 
acquaintance would have been peculiarly delightful to him. Why 
should not such a desire be realized in a future state ? A wish 
to see and personally know, for example, the Apostle Paul, or 
John, is the most likely to arise in the noblest and purest mind ; 



> See A View of the Scripture Revelations of a Future State, laid before the 
parishioners of Halesworth. 



Essay xxvii.] Annotations. 269 

I slioiild be sorry to think such a wish absurd and presump- 
tuous, or unKkely to be gratified. The highest enjoyment, 
doubtless, to the blest, will be the personal knowledge of their 
divine and beloved Master ; yet I cannot but think that some 
part of their happiness will consist in an intimate knowledge of 
the greatest of his followers also ; and of those of them in par- 
ticular whose peculiar qualities are, to each, the most peculiarly 
attractive. 

' In this world, again, our friendships are limited not only to 
those who live in the same age and country, but to a small 
portion even of those who are not unknown to us, and Avliom 
we know to be estimable and amiable, and who, we feel, might 
have been among our dearest Iriends. Our command of time 
and leisure to cultivate friendships, imposes a limit to their 
extent ; they are bounded rather by the occupation of our 
thoughts, than of our affections. And the removal of such im- 
pediments in a better world, seems to me a most desirable, and 
a most probable change. 

' I see no reason, again, why those who have l)een dearest 
friends on earth, should not, when admitted to that happy state, 
continue to be so, with full knowledge and recollection of their 
former friendship. If a man is still to continue (as there is 
every reason to suppose) a social Being, and capable of friend- 
ship, it seems contrary to all probability that he should cast oft 
or forget his former friends, who are partakers with him of the 
like exaltation. He will, indeed, be greatly changed from what 
he was on earth, and unfitted perhaps for friendship with such 
a Being as one of us is now ; but his friend will have under- 
gone (by supposition) a xjorresponding change.' And as we have 
seen those who have been loving playfellows in childhood, grow 
up, if they grow up with good, and with like, dispositions, into 
still closer friendship in riper years, so also it is probable that 
when this our state of childJwod shall be perfected, in the 
maturity of a better world, the like attachment will continue 



^ Tlie same thought is beautifully expressed by one of the most excellent of 
sacred poets, — the author of The Christian Year : — 

' That so, before the Judgment-seat, 

Though changed and glorified each face, 
Not unremember'd we may meet. 
For endless ages to embrace.' 

23* 



270 Of FiiendsM]). [Essay xxvii. 

between tliose companions Vs\\o have trod together the christian 
path to Glory, and have ' taken sweet counsel together, and 
walked in the house of God as friends.' A change to indiffe- 
rence towards tliose who have fixed their hearts on the same 
objects with ourselves during this earthly pilgrimage, and have 
given and received mutual aid during their course, is a change 
as little, I trust, to be expected, as it is to be desired. It 
certainly is not such a change as the Scriptures teach us to 
prepare for. 

' And a belief that, under such circumstances, our earthly 
attachments will remain, is as beneficial as it is reasonable. It 
is likely very greatly to influence our choice of friends ; which 
sm'ely is no small matter. A sincere Christian would not indeed 
be, at any rate, utterly careless whether those Avere sincere 
Christians also, with whom he connected himself : but his care 
is likely to be much greater, if he hopes, that, provided he shall 
have selected such as are treading the same path, and if he shall 
have studied to promote their eternal welfare, he shall meet 
again, never to part more, those to whom his heart is most 
engaged here below. The hope also of rejoining in a better 
state, the friend whom he sees advancing towards that state, is 
an additional spur to his own virtuous exertions. Everything 
which can make heaven appear more desirable, is a lielj) towards 
Ms progress in christian excellence ; and as one of the greatest 
of earthly enjoyments to the best and most exalted Christian, is 
to witness the happiness of a friend, so, one of the brightest of 
his hopes will be, that of exulting in the most perfect happiness 
of those most dear to him. 

' As for the grief, which a man may be supposed to feel, for 
the loss — the total and final loss — of some who may have been 
dear to him on earth, as well as of vast multitudes, I fear, of 
his fellow-creatures, I have only this to remark : that a wise 
and good man in this life, though he never ceases to use his 
endeavours to reclaim the wicked, and to diminish every kind of 
evil and suifering, yet, in cases where it is clear that no good can 
be done by him, strives, as far as possible (though often without 
much success), to withdraw his thoughts from evil which he 
cannot lessen, but which still, in spite of his efforts, will often 
cloud his mind. We cannot at pleasure draw off our thoughts 
entirely from painful subjects which it is in vain to meditate 



Essay xxvli.] Annotations. 2Y1 

about. Tlie power to do this completely, when we will, would 
be a great increase of happiness ; and this power, therefore, it is 
reasonable to suppose the blessed will possess in the world to 
come — that they will occupy their minds entirely with the 
thoughts of things agreeable, and in which their exertions can 
be of service ; and will be able, by an effort of the will, com- 
pletely to banish and exclude every idea that might alloy their 
happiness.' 

^A desire to sequester a marl's self for a Icigher conversation 

such as is found really and truly in divers of the 

ancient hermits and holy fathers of the Church.^ 

Bacon here seems to agree in that commendation of a 
monastic life which is sometimes heard even from Protestants. 
On this subject I take leave to quote a passage from the 
Cautions for the Times. 

' The monks are represented by Eoman-Catholic writei's as all 
pious men, who, bent upon the cultivation of a religious temper 
of mind, withdrew, from the world for that purpose ; as if the 
business and duties of this world were not the very discipline 
which God has appointed for cultivating real righteousness in 
us. And then, the learning, peace, and piety of the monas- 
teries is strongly contrasted with the ignorance and irreligion 
and perpetual wars, of the dark and troublous times, which are 
commonly called ' the middle ages,' in such a manner that 
even Protestants are sometimes led to think and say that, at 
least in former times, andyor those times, the monasteries were 
commendable institutions. But they forget that it was the very 
system of which these were a part, which nnade the world so dark 
and unquiet ; and then, like the ivy which has reduced a tine 
building to a shattered ruin, they held together the fragments 
of that ruin. 

' Of course, if you teach men that holiness can be only, or can 
be best attained by withdrawing from the world into a cloister, 
all those who are bent on living a holy life will withdraw from 
the world; and they will, in so withdrawing, take from the 
world that which should reform it — the benefit of their teaching, 
and the encouragement of their example. One after another 
all those most promising men, who should hare been, each in 



272 Of Friendship. [Essay xxvii. 

the place where Providence had set him, ' the light of the 
world,' and ' the salt of the earth,' will leave the station to 
which God had called them, and seclude themselves within the 
walls of a monastery ; and then, in proportion as the influence 
of good men is removed more and more, society will become 
every day worse and woi-se. The business and pleasures of the 
world will be looked upon as necessarily sinful, and those who 
mix in them as necessarily unholy ; and the thought of using 
them as a discipline in godliness, and learning how to ' use this 
world without abusing it,' will be lost out of men's minds ; till 
at last, by the working of such a system, all appearance of piety 
will really be confined to the monasteries, and the common state 
of society, and the ordinary course of life, will be tainted with 
impurity, and disturbed by violence, and the world will seem 
again, as it did in heathen times, to ' lie in wickedness.' "When 
the SALT is thus drawn away from the mass, and collected to 
particular spots, the remainder is left to putrefy. 

' Let ns illustrate this by an example. Some, even English- 
men, who have visited Slave-States, are satisfied at being told 
that the slaves are far better off and more civilized there than 
in their own barbarian countries ; which is, probably, for the 
most part true. But why have the African countries continued 
so long in gross barbarism ? They have long had intercourse 
with Europeans, who might have taught them to raise sugar 
and cotton, &c,, at home, for the European markets, and in 
other ways might have civilized tliem. And it cannot be said 
that they are incapable of learning ; since free negroes in various 
countries, though they have the disadvantage of being a de- 
graded caste, are yet (however inferior to us) far advanced 
beyond the savage tribes of Africa. 

' But it is the very slcme-trade itself that has kept them bar- 
barians, by encouraging wars for the purpose of taking captives 
to be sold as slaves, and the villanous practices of kidnapping, 
and trading in each other's happiness and liberties. It is the 
very system itself, which men seek to excuse by pointing out 
the comfortable state of slaves when they are caught and sold, 
that, to a great extent, produces, and must, if persisted in, per- 
petuate, the barbarous condition with which this comparative 
comfort is contrasted. The whole of these African tribes might, 
under a better system, have enjoyed in freedom, far, very far, 



Essay xxvii.] Annotations. 273 

greater comfort in their native land, than that which some of 
them now jDOSsess, as slaves, in a foreign land. 

'So, also, in the Case of the monasteries. Those who shut 
themselves up there might have exercised a much better and 
more rational piety (like the Apostles and first Christians) out 
of them, and in the world ; and if they had lived amongst their 
fellow-men, would have helped to raise the whole tone of society 
around them. And it was just the same evil system which 
buried some good men (like lamps in sepulchres) in the cells of 
monasteries, and made the general mass of society outside the 
walls of those establishments so bad, that it seemed to excuse 
their withdrawal from it. 

' It is to be acknowledged, indeed, that some monks some- 
times did some good for the rest of the world. They were 
often engaged in education, attendance on the poor, copying of 
manuscripts, agriculture, &c., and all these were really useful 
occupations. It is not to these things we object, when we 
object to monasteries; for with monasteries these have no 
necessary connection. 

'Let associations be formed foe a good object, when need- 
ful ; instead of first forming an association as an end in itself, 
and then looking out for something for it to do ; else, that 
something, being a secondary matter, will sometimes be ill 
done, or neglected, and sometimes will be what had better be 
left undone.' 



' There is as Tnuch difference Tjetween the counsel that a friend 
giveth, and that a man giveth himself, as there is hetioeen the 
counsel of a friend and a flatterer. Fo7' there is no such 
flatterer as a man^s self 

I have already remarked, in the notes on ' Truth,' that men 
are in danger of exercising on themselves, when under the in- 
fluence of some passion, a most pernicious oratorical power, by 
pleading the cause, as it were before himself, of that passion. 
Suppose it anger, for instance, that he is feeling ; he is naturally 
disposed to dwell on, and amplify the aggravating circumstances 
of the supposed provocation, so as to make oufr a good case for 
himself. This of course- tends to heighten his resentment, and 



ST-i Of FrlendsJi'ip. [Essay xxvii. 

to satisfy him that he ' doth well to be aiigiy -^ or perhaps to 
persuade him that he is not angry, but is a model of patience 
under intolerable wrongs. And the like takes place^ if it be 
selfish cupidity, unjust partiality, pai-ty-spirit, or any other 
passion that may be operating. For, universally, men are but 
too apt to take more pains in justifying their propensities, than 
it would cost to control them. But besides the danger of self- 
deceit, when under the immediate inlluence of a passion, many 
a man deceives himself as to what really are his own natural 
tendencies. For instance, one who is somewhat, inclined to the 
love of money may fancy himself remarkably liberal ; because 
every act of liberality will have cost him such an etfort, that 
he will think much of it, as a most heroic sacrifice. A man, 
again, who has much self-esteem, may fancy himself j)eculiarly 
modest and humble, because he will view, as it were, through 
a magnifying-glass any act of condescension, and will seem to 
himself to be lowering his own just pretensions, when he is 
taking upon himself less than he thinks he has a fair claim to, 
though, in reality, more than is riglit. And so in other cases. 

Now, as the advice of a good physician may be of use in 
helping us to understand our own bodily constitution, so a 
judicious friend, a Avise and candid counsellor, may perform a 
like service in the important point of self-knowledge, and help 
to guard us against this kind of self-deceit. According to the 
Hindoo law, the penalty denounced against a breach of con- 
jugal fidelity is remitted only in case of the inducement to its 
commission having been the present of an elephant^ — this being 
considered a douceur too magnificent for any one to be expected 
to refuse. Now, in Europe, though an actual elephant is not 
the very thing that ofifers the strongest temptation, there is in 
most j)eople's conscience something analogous to it ; and diffe- 
rent things are ' elephants' to different people. Happy is that 
man who has a faithful friend to remind him to be on the look- 
'Out for, and to help him to discover, his ' elephant.' 

' Ohservhig our faults in others is sometimes imjproper for 
our case? 

It will always be improper for our case unless we make the 
right use of such observation, — which is, so to estimate the 



Essay xxvii.] Annotations. 275 

temptation of otlieis that ^vc luaj the better understand our 
own, 

■"How is it men, when they in judgment dt 
On the same faultSj now censure, ,now acquit ? 
'Tis not that they are to the error blind. 
But tliat a different object fills the mind 
Judging of others, we can se« t(X) well 
Their grievous fall ; but not, how grieved they fell: 
Judging ourselves, we to our minds recall. 
Not how we fell, but how we grieved to falL' 

— Crabbe, Tales of Ute HalL 

But though ten thousand of the greatest faults in others are^ 
to us, of less consequence than one small fault in ourselves, 
yet self-ajjproval is so much more agreeable to us than self- 
examination, — which, as Bacon says, ' is a medicine sometimes 
too piercing and corrosive,' — that we are more ready to examine 
our neighbours than ourselves, and to rest satisfied with finding, 
or fancying, that we are better than they ; forgetting that, even 
if it is really so, better does not always imply good ; and that 
our course of duty is not like a race which is won by him who 
runs, however slowly, if the rest are still slower. It is this 
forgetfulness that causes bad examples to do much the greatest 
amount of evil among those who do not follow them. For, 
among the four kinds of bad examples that do us harm — 
namely, those we imitate — those we proudly exult over — those 
which drive us into an opposite extreme — and those which 
lower our standard, — this last is the most hurtful. For oiu who 
is corrupted by becoming as bad as a bad example, there are ten 
that gre debased by being content with being better. 

But though this observing of faults in another is thus ' some- 
times improper for our case' — and though, at any time, to dwell 
on the faults of another is wrong, — yet in the case of a friend, 
though not of a stranger, we are perhaps ready to fall into the 
opposite error, of overlooking them altogether, or of defending 
them, ]^ow, it is absolutely necessary to perceive and acknowl- 
edge them : for, if we think ourselves bound to vindicate them 
in our friend, we shall not be very likely to condemn them in 
ourselves. Self-love, will, most likely, demand fair play, and 
urge that what is right in our friend is not wrong in us ; and 
we shall have been perverting our own principles of morality ; 
thus turning the friendship that might yield such ' fair fruit ' 
into a baneful poison-tree. 



276 Of FnendsM^. [Essay xxvii. 

' The two noble fruits of friendsMjp {peace in the affections, and 
support of the judgment) follow the lastfrxdt, which is^ like 
theponiegt'-aiuUe, full of many kernels . . . .' 

' The manifold iise of friendship^ 

One of these manifold uses- of friendsliip is,, the advantage, 
not noticed by Bacon, to be derived from a very, very discreet 
and pure-minded friend; that you may trust him to conceal 
from you some tilings which you had better not know. There 
are cases m which there is an advantage in knowing, and an 
advantage in not knowing; and the two cannot of course be 
combined, except by the thing being known to your other self — 
jour ' alter ipse,' — ^and kept back from you. 

For instance, a man may have done something amiss ; your 
friend may say to hira, ^ I have not told my friend of this, and 
will not, provided you take care to discontinue the practice — to 
rectify what is done wrong, — ^to keep clear of any repetition, &c., 
as the case may be.' And he will be more encouraged to do 
so if he knows that your estimation of him is not as yet im- 
paired. And yet such a person has need to be carefully looked 
after ; which of course your friend will take care to do. 

And there are other cases also in which such a concealment 
will be advantageous. But of course one who can be so trusted 
must be, as has been said, one of consummate wisdom and 
integrity. 

It may be worth noticing as a curious circumstance, when 
persons past forty before they were at all acquainted, form 
together a very close intimacy of friendship. For grafts of old 
wood to take, there must be a wonderful congeniality between 
the trees. 



ESSAY XXVm. ON EXPENSE. 

RICHES ai*e for spending, and spendiiig for honour and good 
actions — therefore extraordinary expense must be limited 
by the worth of the occasion : for voluntary undoing' may be as 
well for a mane's country as for the kingdom of heaven ; but 
ordinary ex2>ense ought to be limited by a man's estate, and 
governed with such regard as'' it be wdthin his compass; and not 
subject to deceit and abuse of servants ; and ordered to the best 
show, that the bills may be less tlian the estimation abroad. 
Oertainly, if a man will keep but of even hand, his ordinary 
expenses ought to be but to the half of his receipts ; and if he 
think to wax' rich, but to the third part. It is no baseness 
for the greatest to descend and look into their own estate. 
Some forbear it, not upon negligence alone, but doubting* to 
bring thenxsel's^es into melancholy, in respect* they shall find it 
broken : but wounds cajinot be cured without searching. He 
diat cannot look into his own estate at all had need both chuse 
well those w^iom he employ eth, and change them often; for new 
are more tiuaorous aud less subtle. He that can look into his 
estate but seldo-m, it behoveth him to turn all to certainties. A 
man had need, if he be plentiful in some kind of expense, to be 
as saving again in some other : as, if he be plentiful iii diet, to 
be saving in apparel ; if he be plentiful in the hall, to be saving 
in the stable, and the like ; for he that is plentiful in expenses 
<»f all kinds, will liardly be preserved from decay. In clearing 
of a man's estate, he may as well hurt himself in being too 
sudden as in letting it run on too long, for hasty selling is 
commonly as disadvantageable* as interest Besides, he that 
eleai« at once will relapse, t<?r, finding himself out of straits, he 



^ Undoing. Ruin., *TIe tliat rentures to be a surety for anotiier, ventures un- 
doing for his sake.' — South. 
" As. That. See page 23. 

* Wax. To grew ; to be-come. See page 263, 

* Daubt To fear. 

"I doubt there's deep resentment in his mind.' — Otwatj. 
' In respect. In case. 

* Disadvantageable. Disadvantageous. 'The said court had given a very (fis- 
advantageable relation of three great farms.' — Addison, 

24 



278 Of Expense. [Essay xxviii. 

will revert to his customs; but he that cleareth by degrees 
induceth a habit of frugality, and gaineth as well upon his 
mind as upon his estate. Certainly, who' hath a state to repair 
may not despise small things : and, commonly, it is less dis- 
honourable to abridge petty charges than to stoop to petty 
gettings. A man ought warily to begin charges which, once 
begun, will continue ; but in matters that return not he may 
be more magnificent. 



ANNOTx\TIONS. 

' EicJies are for spending ', and spending for JionowrJ 

For those who are above the poorest classes, the heaviest, or 
some of the heaviest expenses are, as Bacon expresses it, 'for 
honour' — i. e. for the display of wealth. We do not, indeed, 
commonly speak of ' display of wealth' except when the wealth 
and the display of it are something unusually gi-eat. We speak 
rather of 'living in a decent or in a handsome style.' But this 
does certainly imply the purchase of many articles which we 
provide ourselves with hecause they are costly/ — ^which are pro- 
vided in order to be observed, and observed as costly ; or, which 
comes to the same thing, because the absence of them would be 
observed as denoting shabbiness. For instance, a &ilver watch, 
or a gilt one, is as 'useful as a gold one ; and beech or cherry- 
tree makes as useful furniture as mahogany or rose-wood. And 
as for the mere gratification to the eye, of the superior beauty of 
these latter, this is, to persons of moderate means, no sufficient 
set-oiF against the difference of cost. Moreover, a bunch of 
wild flowers, or a necklace of crab's-eye-seeds, &c., are as pretty 
to look at, and as becoming, as jewels or coral ; and if these 
latter were to become equally cheap, some other kind of deco- 
ration would be sought for, and prized on account of its known 
costliness. 

For, though people censure any one for making a display 
heyond his station, if he falls below it in what are considered 



Who. He who. See page \ 



Essay xxviii,] Annotations, 279 

tlie decencies of his station, lie is considered a« eitlier alisnrdly 
penm-ious or else very poor. 

And why, it may be asked, should any one be at all ashameS. 
of this latter, — supposing his poverty is not the result of any mis- 
conduct 1< The answer is, that though poverty is not accounted 
h^ any persons of sense disgraceful, the exposure of it m felt to 
be a thing indecent: and though, accordingly, a right-minded 
man do^ not seek to make a seci'et of it, he does not like to ex- 
pose it, any more than he would to go without clothes. 

The Greeks and Romans had no distinct expressions for the 
^ disgraceful' -and the ' indecent:' '■ turpe' and maxpov served to 
express both. And some of the ancient philosophei-s, especially 
the Cynics (see Cic. de Off,) founded paradoxes on this ambi- 
guity, and thus bewildered their hearers and themselves. For 
it is a great disadvantage not to have (as our language has) dis- 
tinct expressions lor things really different. 

Tliere are several tilings, by the way besides those just 
attended to, which are of the character of, not disgraceful, but 
indecent: that is, of the existence of which we are not ashamed, 
but which we should be ashamed to obtrude on any one's 
notice : e. g. selt-love^ which is the deliberate desire for one's 
own happiness; and regard for the good opinion of others. 
These are not — when not carried to excess — vices, and con- 
sequently are not disgraceful. Any vice a man wishes to be 
thought not to havt ^ but no one pretends or wishes to be 
thouglit wholly destitute of all regard for his own welfare or 
for the good opinion of his fellow-creatures. But a man of 
sense and delicacy keeps these in the back ground, and, as it 
were, clothes them, because they become offensive when pro- 
minently displayed. 

And so it is with poverty. A man of sense is not ashamed 
of it, or of deliberately confessing it ; but he keeps the marks 
of it out of sight. 

These observations a person was making to a friend, who 
strenuously controverted his views, and could not, or would not, 
perceive the distinction above pointed out. ' I, for my part,' 
said he, ' am poor, and I feel no shame at all at its being 
known. "Why, this coat that I now have on, I have had turned^ 
because I could not well afford a new one ; and I care not who 
knows it.' He did not perceive that he had established the 



280 Of Expense. [Essay xxviii. 

very point he was controverting ; for if there had been, in his 
view, nothing indecent in the display of poverty, he would have 
worn the coat without turning. He might iiave had it scoured 
if needful ; but though clean, it would still have looked thread- 
bare ; and he did not like to make this display of poverty. 

.' Ordina/ry expense ougJd to he limited hy a mans estate^ 

It is of course a gi-eat folly — and a very common one, — for 
a man to impoverish himself by a showy expenditure beyond 
his means. And it is a minor folly for him — without out- 
running — to make a display beyond his station, and to waste 
money on show such as was not expected of him, when he 
might, obviously, have found many better uses for it ; but when 
to chuse the time as to each point, would of course be no easy- 
matter. 

Perhaps it may be laid down in reference to what may be 
called ornamental expense — anything that is not so strictly re- 
quired as a decency^ that you would be censured and ridiculed 
for being without it, — that you should have such articles only 
as you can afford, not only to buy, but to replace ; s.upposing 
them of a perishable nature. 

For, the ' honour,' as Bacon calls it, of any display of wealth, 
consists, surely, in not only having such and such articles, but 
having them without uneasiness ; — ^Avithout any very anxious 
care about them. If you have a veiy fine set of china-ware, and 
are in a continual apprehension of its being broken, you had 
better, in point of respectability as well as of comfort, have been 
content with plain Worcester. If a lady is in a perpetual fever 
lest some costly veil or gown should be soiled or torn, this 
indicates that she would have done better to wear a less costly 
dress. There is something in what is said by little Sandford in 
the ' Tale,' who preferred a horn cup to one of silver, ' because 
it never made him uneasy.' 

Of course it is not meant that a man should not live in a 
house such as he could not afford with perfect ease to rebuild 
if it were burnt down ; or that he ought to be thus prepared to 
meet with other such extraordinary calamities. But lie should 
be prepared to meet each kind of accident that each kind of 
article respectively is commonly liable to : e. g. glass and porce- 
lain to be broken, trinkets to be dropped and lost, horses to be 



Essay xxviii.] Annotations. 281 

lamed, &c. If you cannot face the ordinary and average 
amount of accidents with respect to any such article, or if it is 
a matter of anxious care and uneasiness, you are better without 
it. For this anxious care and uneasiness proves that the ex- 
pense is a great one to you. You may indeed conceal this 
anxious care, and show, externally, a feigned composure and 
indifference. But then you are undergoing all this uneasiness, 
— and also all this labour to hide this uneasiness, — for the sake 
of appearing richer than you are. But to one who has no wish 
of this kind, the proper measure is, with a view to respectability, 
as well as peace of mind, not what expenses he can afford, but 
what he can habitually afford \Y\{\\o\\i feeling them a grievous care. 

Of course higher motives come in, when one considers the 
good that may be done, to our friends and to the poor, by 
curtailing showy expenditure. 

It is wonderful how some people fail to perceive what an 
absurd and ridiculous figure a man makes who is continually 
bemoaning the narrowness of his means, and setting forth the 
hardship of his case in not having a better income, while he is 
sitting in a room full of inlaid tables, splendid inkstands and 
boxes, and other costly gewgaws, wdiich it is no discredit at all 
to be wdthout, and which are thought desirable chiefly as a 
display of wealth. 

' It is no hasenessfoi' the greatest to desGend and look into 
their own estate,'' 

It is worth remarking, as a curious circumstance, and the 
reverse of what many would expect, that the expenses called for 
by a real or imagined necessity, of those, who have large in- 
comes, are greater in proportion than those of persons with 
slenderer means ; and that consequently a larger proportion of 
what are called the rich, are in embarrassed circumstances, than 
of the poorer. This is often overlooked, because the absolute 
nunnber of those with large incomes is so much less, that, of 
course, the absolute number of persons under pecuniary difficul- 
ties in the poorer classes must form a very great majority. But 
if you look to the proportions., it is quite the reverse. Take the 
numbers of persons of each amount of income, divided into 
classes, from £100 per annum up to £100,000 per annum, and 
. 24* 



282 Of Expense. [Essay xxviii. 

you will find tlie jpe? centage of tliose wlio are under pecuniary 
difficulties continually augmenting as you go upAvards. And 
when you come to sovereign States, whose revenue is reckoned 
by millions, you will hardly find one that is not deeply involved 
in debt ! So that it would appear that the larger the income, 
the harder it is to live within it. 

When men of great revenues, whether civil or ecclesiastical, 
live in the splendour and sensuality of Sardanapalus, they are 
apt to plead that this is expected of them ; which may be, 
perhaps, sometimes true, in the sense that such conduct is 
anticipated as probcihle ; not true, as implying that it is re- 
quired or api3roved. I have elsewhere^ remarked upon this 
ambignity in the word ' expect :' but it is worth noticing as 
sometimes leading, in conjunction with other causes, to a prac- 
tical bad efiect upon this point of expenses as well as upon 
many others. It is sometimes used in the sense of ' anticipate,' 
' calculate on,' &c. (eATrt^w), in short, ' consider as p>robable^ 
sometimes for ' require or demand as reasonable,' — consider as 
right' (afiw). Thus, I may fairly ' expect' (d^tw) that one who 
has received kindness from me, should protect me in distress ; 
yet I may have reason, to expect {eXmi^eiv) that he will not. 
'England expects every man to do his duty;' but it would 
be chimerical to expect, that is, anticipate, a universal per- 
formance of duty. What may reasonably be expected (in one 
sense of the word), must be precisely the practice of the 
majority: since it is the majority of instances that constitutes 
prohahility: what may reasonably be expected (in the other 
sense), is something much beyond the practice of the generality : 
as long, at least, as it shall be true, that ' narrow is the way 
that leadeth to life, and few there be that find it.' 

^ He that is plentiful in expenses of all hinds will hardly he 
preserved from decay.'' 

Obviously true as this is, yet it is apparently completely over- 
looked by the imprudent spendthrift, who, finding that he is 
able to afi'ord this, or that, or the other, expense, forgets that 
all of them together will ruin him. This is what, in logical 
language, is called the ' Fallacy of Composition.' 



* jaiements of Lorjic, Appendix. 



ESSAY XXIX. OF THE TRUE GEEATj^SSS 
OF KINGDOMS AND ESTATES.^ 

npHE speech of Themistocles, the Athenian, which was haughty 
-^ and arrogant, in taking so much to liimself, had been a 
grave and wise observation and censure, applied at large to 
others. Desired at a feast to touch a lute, he said, 'he could 
not fiddle, but yet he could make a small town a great city." 
These words (liolpen' a little with a metaphor) may express 
two differing abilities in those that deal in business of estate ; 
for, if a true survey be taken of counsellors and statesmen, there 
may .be found (though rarely) those which can make a small 
state great, and yet cannot fiddle, — as, on the other side, there 
will be found a great many that can fiddle very cunningly,* but 
yet are so far fi-om being able to make a small State great, as* 
their gift lieth the other way — to bring a great and flourishing 
estate to ruin and decay. And, certainly, those degenerate arts 
and shifts, whereby many counsellors and governors gain both 
favour with their masters and estimation with the vulgar, 
deserve no better name than fiddling, being things rather 
pleasing for the time, and graceful to themselves only, than 
tending to the weal and advancement of the State which they 
serve. Tliere are also (no doubt) counsellors and governors 
which may be held sufficient, negotiis pares [able to manage 
afiairs,] and to keep them from precipices and manifest incon- 
veniences, which, nevertheless, are far from the ability to raise 
and amplify an estate in power, means, and fortune. But be 
the workmen what they may be, let us speak of the work — ^that 
is, the true greatness of kingdoms and estates, and the means 
thereof. An argument* fit for great and mighty princes to 



* Estates. States. See page 119. ^ 'Plai. Vit. Themist. &A. imi. 
' Holpen. See page 191. 

* Cunningly. Skilfully. 

' And many bardes that to the trembling chord 
Can tune their timely voices cunningly.' — Spenser. 

* As. That. See page 23. 

* Argument. Subject. 

' Sad task ! yet argument 
Not less, but more, heroic than the wrath 
Of stern Achilles.' — Milton, 



284: Of the True GreQiness of iL^rAjdoms, c&c. [Essay xxix. 

have in tiiair hand ; to the end that neither by over-measuring 
thgjfy forces, they lose themselves in vain enterprises; nor, on 
the other side, by undervaluing them, they descend to fearful 
and pusillanimous counsels. 

The greatness of an estate, in bulk and territory, doth fall 
under measure ; and the greatness of linances and revenue doth 
fall under computation. The population may appear by musters, 
and the number and greatness of cities and towns by cards and 
maps ; but yet there is not any thing, amongst civil aifairs, 
more subject to error, than the right valuation and true 
judgment concerning the power and forces of an estate. The 
kingdom of heaven is compared, not to any great kernel, or 
nut, but to a grain of mustard-seed ;' wdiich is one of the least 
grains, but hath in it a property and spirit hastily to get up 
and spread. So are there States great in territory, and yet 
not apt to enlarge or command : and some that have but a 
email dimension of stem, and yet are apt° to be the foundation 
of great monarchies. 

Walled towns, stored arsenals and armories, goodly races of 
horse, chariots of war, elephants, ordnance, artillery, and the 
like — all this is but a sheep in a lion's skin, except the breed 
and disposition of the people be stout and warlike. 

Nay, number (itself) in ai-mies importeth' not much, where 
the people are of weak courage ; for, as Yirgil saith, ' It never 
troubles the wolf how many the sheep be.*'* The army of the 
Persians, in tlie plains of Arbela, was such a vast sea of people, 
as it did somewhat astonish the commanders in Alexander's 
army, who came to him, therefore, and wished him to set upon 
them by night; but he answered, 'He would not pilfer the 
victory"' — and the defeat was easy. Wheii Tigranes, the Ar- 
menian, being encamped upon a hill with four hundred thousand 
men, discovered the army of the Eomans, being not above 
fourteen thousand, marching towards him, he made himself 
merry with it, and said, 'Yonder men are too many for an 



» Ifatt. xiil 31. 

^ Apt. Qualified for ; adapted to. 'All that were strong and apt for war.'- 
2 Kings. 

^ Import. To be of importance. See page 21. 

• Virgil, Eel viL 51. * A. L. I. vii. 2. 



Essay xxix.] Of the True Greatness of Kingdoms^ d;e. 285 

ambassage/ and too few for a fight ;' but before the sunset, he 
found them enow'' to give liim the chase with infinite slaughter.* 
Many are the examples of the great odds between number and 
courage; so that a man may truly make a judgment, that the 
principal point of greatness, in any State, is to have a race of 
military men. Neither is money the sinews of Avar (as it is tri- 
vially said), where the sinews of men's arms in base and effemi- 
nate people are failing ; for Solon said well to Croesus (when in 
ostentation he showed him his gold), ' Sir, if any other come that 
hath better iron than you, he will be master of all this gold.' 
Tlierefore, let any prince, or State, think soberly* of his forces, 
except his militia of natives be of good and valiant soldiers ; and 
let princes, on the other side, that have subjects of martial dis- 
position, know their own strength, unless they be otherwise 
wanting unto themselves. As for mercenary forces (which is 
the help in this case), all examples show that, whatsoever estate 
or prince doth rest upon them, he may spread his feathers for a 
time, but he will mew them soon after. 

The blessing of Judas and Issachar' Avill never meet ; that 
the same people, or nation should be both the lion's whelp, 
and the ass between burdens, — neither will it be, that a people 
overlaid with taxes, should ever become valiant and martial. 
It is true, that taxes, levied by consent of the estate, do abate 
men's courage less, as it hath been seen notably* in the excises 
of the Low Countries, and, in some degree, in the subsidies of 
England ; for, you must note, that we speak now of the heart, 
and not of the purse — so that although the same tribute and 
tax, laid by consent, or by imposing, be all one to the purse, 
yet it works diversely' upon the courage. So that you may 



* Ambassage. Embassy. ' He sendeth an ambassage, and desireth conditions 
of peace.' — Luke xiv. 32. 

* Enow. Old plural of enough. 

'Man hath selfish foes enow besides, 
That day and night for his destruction wait.'-— iH/iV^on. 
' Pint. Vit. Luculli, 27. 

* Soberly. Moderately. ' Not to think of himself more highly than he ought 
to think, but to think soberly. — Rotnans xii. 3. 

" Gen. xlix. 9, 14. , 

* Notably. In a remarkable manner. (From the adjective notable.) 

' He is a most notable coward.' — Shakespere. 
' Diversely. Differently. (From diverse.) See page 21. 



286 Of the True Greatness of Kingdoms, c&c. [Essay xxix. 

conclude, that no people overcliarged Avitli tribute is fit for 
empire. 

Let States, tliat aim at greatness, take lieed liow their nobi- 
lity and gentlemen do multiply too fast ; for that maketh the 
common subject grow to be a peasant and base swain, driven 
out of heart, and, in eflfect, but a gentleman's labourer. Even 
as you may see in coppice woods, if you leave your straddles 
too thick, you shall never have clean underwood, but shrubs 
and bushes ; so in countries, if the gentlemen be too many, the 
commons will be base — and you will bring it to that, that not 
the hundreth poll will be fit for an helmet, especially as to the 
infantry, which is the nerve of an army, — and so there will be 
great population and little strength. This wdiich I speak of 
hath been no where better seen than by comparing of England 
and France ; whereof England, though far less in territory and 
population, hath been, nevertheless, an overmatch : in regard' 
the middle people of England make good soldiers, Avhich the 
peasants of France do not : herein the device of King Henry YII. 
(whereof I have spoken largely in the history of his life) was 
profound and admirable, in making farms and houses of hus- 
bandry of a standard, that is, maintained with such a proportion 
of land unto them, as may breed a subject to live in convenient 
plenty, and no servile condition ; and to keep the plough in the 
hands of the owners, and not mere hirelings ; and thus indeed 
von shall attain to Virgil's character, whicli he gives to ancient 
Italy:- 

' Terra potens armis atque ubere glebse.'^ 

l!^either is the estate^ (which for anything I know, is almost 
peculiar to England, and hardly to be found anywhere else, 
except it be, perhaps, in Poland) to be passed over — I mean the 
state of free servants and attendants upon noblemen and gentle- 
men, which are no ways inferior unto the yeomanry for arms : 
and therefore, out of all question, the splendour and magnifi- 
cence and great retinues, the hospitality of noblemen and 
gentlemen received into custom, do much conduce unto martial 

' In regard. For the reason that; on account of. ' Change was thought neces- 
sary in regard of the injury tlie Church had received.' — Hooker. 
* Virg. uE'neid' i. 335 :— • 

' For deeds of arms and fertile soil renown'd.' 
'Estate. Order of men, See page 119. 



Essay xxix.] Of the Tnie Greatness of Kingdoms, etc. 287 

greatness — wliereas, contrariwise, the close and reserved living 
of noblemen and gentlemen cansetli a penury of military forces. 
By all means it is to be procured/ that the trunk of Nebu- 
chadnezzar's tree of monarchy^ be great enough to bear the 
branches and the boughs ; that is, that the natural subjects of 
the crown, or State, bear a sufficient proportion to the strange 
subjects that tliey govern. Therefore all States that are liberal 
of naturalization towards strangers are tit for empire ; for to 
think tliat an handful of people can, with the greatest courage 
and policy in the world, embrace too large extent of dominion, 
it may hold for a time, but it will fail suddenly. The Spartans 
were a nice^ people in point of naturalization ; whereby, while 
they kept their compass, they stood firm, but when they did 
spread, and their boughs were become too great for their stem, 
they became a windfall upon the sudden. I^ever any State was, 
in this point, so open to receive strangers into their Body as 
were the Romans ; therefore it sorted* with them accordingly, 
for they grew to the greatest monarchy. Their manner was to 
grant naturalization (which they called 'jus civitatis'^) — and to 
grant it in the highest degree, that is, not only 'jus commercii, 
jus connubii, jus hgereditatis,' but also 'jus suifragii' and 'jus 
honorum ;' and this not to singular' persons alone, but likewise 
to wdiole families — yea, to cities, and sometimes to nations. 
Add to this, their custom of plantation of colonies, whereby the 
Roman plant w^as removed into the soil of other nations ; and, 
putting both constitutions together, you will say, that it was not 
the Romans that spread upon the world, but it was the world 
that spread upon the Romans — and that was the sure war of 
greatness. I have marvelled sometimes at Spain, how they 
clasp and contain so large dominions with so few natural 
Spaniards: but sure the whole compass of Spain is a very great 

* Procured. Contrived; cared for. . 

' Proceed, Salinus, to procure my fall.' — S/mkespere. 
^ Ban. iv. 10, seq. ^ Nice. Difficult. 

* Sort. To succeed; to happen. 

' And if it sort not well.' — Shahespere. 

* The right of citizenship. 

® Tlie right of traffic, the right of marriage, the right of inheritance, the right 
of voting, and the right of bearing offices. 

' Singular. Single. ' That which represents one determinate thing is called a 
singular idea.' — Watts. 



288 Of the True Greatness of Kingdoms, c&c. [Essay xxix. 

body of a tree, far above Eome and Sparta at the first ; and, 
besides, though they have not had that usage to naturahze 
liberally, yet they have that wliich is next to it — that is, to em- 
ploy, almost indifferently, all nations in their militia of ordinary 
soldiers, yea, and sometimes in their higliest commands ; nay, 
it seemeth at this instant, they are sensible of this want of na- 
tives, as by the Pragmatical Sanction, now published, appeareth. 

It is certain, -that sedentary and within-door arts, and delicate 
manufactures (that require rather the finger than the arm), have 
in their nature a contrariety to a military disposition ; and 
generally all warlike people are a little idle, and love danger 
better than travail' — neither must they be too much broken oflf 
it, if they shall be preserved in vigour : therefore it was great 
advantage in the ancient states of Sparta, Athens, Rome, and 
others, that they had the use of slaves, which commonly did 
rid^ those manufactures ; but that is abolislied, in greatest part, 
by the christian law. That which cometh nearest to it is, to 
leave those arts chiefly to strangers (which, for that purpose, 
are the more easily to be received), and to contain the principal 
bulk of the vulgar natives within those three kinds — tillers of 
the ground, free servants, and handicraftsmen of strong and 
manly arts, as smiths, masons, carpenters, &c., not reckoning 
professed soldiers. 

But, above all, for empire and greatness, it importeth' most, 
that a nation do profess arms as their principal honour, study, 
and occupation ; for the things which we have formerly spoken 
of are but habilitations' towards arms ; and what is habilitation 
wijjjiout intention and act ? Romulus, after his death (as they 
report, or feign), sent a present^ to the Romans, that above 
all they should intend" arms, and then they should prove the 

* Travail. Toil ; labour. ' As every thing of price, so this doth require 
^r avail. ' — Hooker. 

' Rid. To dispatch. 

' We'll thither straight ; for willingness rids way.' — Shakespere. 

* Import. To be of importance. See page 21, 

* Habilitation. Qnalification. 
' Present. A mandate. 

' Be it known to all men by these presents.' — Shakespere. 

* Intend. To pay attention to. 

' Go, therefore, mighty Powers! intend at home, 
Wliile here shall be our home what best may ease 
The present misery.' — Milton. 



Essay xxix.] Of the True Greatness of Kingdoms, <&g. 289 

greatest empire of the world. The fabric of the State of 
Sparta was wholly (though not wisely) framed and composed 
to that scope and end : the Persians and Macedonians had it 
for a flash ; the Gauls, Germans, Goths, Saxons, Normans, and 
others, had it for a time ; the Turks have it at this day, though 
in great declination. Of christian Eurojie, they that have it 
are, in efl:ect, only the Spaniards ; but it is so plain, that every 
man proliteth in that he most intendeth, that it needeth not to 
be stood upon ; it is enough to point at it — that no nation 
which doth not directly profess arms, may look to have great- 
ness fall into their mouths : and, on the other side, it is a 
most certain oracle of time, that those States that continue long 
in that profession (as the Romans and Turks principally have 
done), clo wonders ; and those that have professed arms but for 
an age have, notwithstanding, commonly attained that greatness 
in that age which maintained them long after, when their pro- 
fession and exercise of arms hath grown to decay. 

Incident to this point is for a State to have those laws or 
customs which may reach forth unto them just occasions (as 
may be pretended') of war ; for there is that justice imprinted 
in the nature of men, that they enter not upon wars (whereof 
so many calamities do ensue), but upon some, at the least 
specious, grounds and quarrels. The Turk hath at hand, for 
cause of war, the propagation of his law or sect, a quarreP that 
he may always command. The Romans, though they esteemed 
the extending the limits of their empire to be great honour to 
their generals when it was done, yet they never rested upon 
that alone to begin a war. First, tlierefore, let nations that ' 
pretend to greatness have this, that they be sensible of wrongs, 
either upon borderers, merchants, or politic ministers ; and that 
they sit not too long upon a provocation : secondly, let them be 
prest' and ready to give aids and succours to their confederates, 
as it ever was with the Romans ; insomuch, as if the confede- 
rates had leagues defensive with divers other States, and, upon 

* Pi-etend. To put forward. 

' And his left foot preteiids.' — Dryden. 

* Quarrel. Reason,; ground for any actio7i. See page 76. 
' Prest. Eager; quick. 

' Each mincl is prest, and open every ear, 
To hear new tidings.' — Fairfax. 
' They pour'd prestly into the hall.'— OW Ballad, 1727. 

25 T 



290 Of the True Greatness of JTingdoms, (£;c. [Essay xxix. 

invasion offered, did implore their aids severally, yet the 
Romans would ever be the foremost, and leave it to none other 
to have the honour. As for the wars, which were anciently 
made on the behalf of a kind of party, or tacit conformity of 
state, I do not see how they may be well justified ; as w^hen the 
Romans made a war for the liberty of Grsecia,' or when the 
Lacedaemonians and Athenians made war to set up or pull down 
democracies and oligarchies ; or when wars were made by 
foreigners, under the pretence of justice or protection, to deliver 
the subjects of others from tyranny and oppression, and the like. 
Let it suffice, that no estate expect to be great, that i& not awake 
upon any just occasion of arming. 

'No body can be healthful without exercise, neither natural 
body nor politic ; and certainly to a kingdom or estate, a just 
and honourable war is the true exercise. A civil war, indeed, is 
like the heat of a fever : but a foreign war is like the heat of 
exercise, and serveth to keep the body in health ; for in a 
slothful peace, both courages will effeminate,'^ and manners 
cornipt : but howsoever it be for happiness, without all question 
for greatness, it maketh to be still for the most part in arms : 
and the strength of a veteran army (though it be a chargeable 
business), always on foot, is that w^iicli commonly giveth the 
law, or, at least, the reputation amongst all neighbour States, as 
may be well seen in Spain ; which hath had, in one part or 
other, a veteran army almost continually, now by' the space of 
six-score years. 

To be master of the sea* is an abridgment of a monarchy. 
Cicero, wn-iting to Atticus of Pompey's preparation against Caesar, 
saith, ' Concilium Pompeii plane Themistocleum est ; putat enim, 
qui mari potitur, eum rerum potiri ;' and without doubt, Pompey 
had tired out Caesar, if upon vain confidence he had not left 
that way. We see the great effects of battles by sea : the battle 
of Actium decided the empire of the world ; the battle of Lepanto 
arrested the greatness of the Turk. Tliere be many examples 

^ Grsecia. Greece. ' And the rough goat is the King of Grecia.' — Ban. viii. 21 

* Effeminate. To become effe^mnale or weak. 

' In a slothful prince, courage will effeminate.'' — Pope. 
" By. During. ' By the space of three years I ceased not to warn every one, 
night and day, with tears.' — Acta xx. 31. 

* 'Ponipey's plan is plainly from Themistocles ; for he judges that whoever 
becomes master of the sea is master of all things.' — Ad. AJfic. x. 8. 



Essay xxix.] Of the True Greatness of Kingdoms, <&c. 291 

'where sea-figlits have been final to the war ; hut this is when 
princes, or States, have set up their rest upon the battles ; but 
thns much is certain, that he that commands the sea is at great 
liberty, and may take as much and as little of the war as he 
will ) whereas those that be strongest by land are many times, 
nevertheless, in great straits. Surely, at this day, with us of 
Europe, the vantage' of strength at sea (which is one of the 
principal dowries of this kingdom of Great Britain) is great; 
both because most of the kingdoms of Europe are not merely" 
inland, but girt with the sea most part of their compass, and 
because the wealth of both Indies seems, in great part, but an 
accessory to the command of the seas. 

The wars of later ages seem to be made in the dark, in 
respect of the glory and honour which reflected upon men from 
the wars in ancient time. There be now, for martial encourage- 
ment, some degrees and orders of chivalry, which, nevertheless, 
are conferred promiscuously upon soldiers and no soldiers, and 
some remembrance perhaps upon the escutcheon, and some hos- 
pitals for maimed soldiers, and such like things ; but in ancient 
times, the trophies erected .upon the place of the victory, the 
funeral laudatives* and monuments for those that died in the 
wars, the crowns and garlands personal, the style of emperor, 
which the great kings of the world after borrowed, the triumphs 
of the generals upon their return, the great donatives and 
largesses upon the disbanding of the armies, were things able 
to inflame all men's courages ; but, above all, that of the triumph 
amongst the Romans was not pageants, or gaudery,* but one of 
the wisest and noblest institutions that ever was : for it con- 
tained three things, honour to the general, riches to the treasury 
out of the spoils, and donatives to the army : but that honour, 
perhaps, were not fit for monarchies, except it be in the person 
of the monarch himself, or his sons ; as it came to pass in the 
times of the Roman emperors, who did improj^riate' the actual 



Vantage. Advantage. 

' Yet you have all the vantage of her -wrong.' — Shakexpere. 
Merely. Completely. 
Laudatives. Panegyrics. ' The first was a laudative of monarchy.' — Bacon's 



Gaudery. Ostentatious finery. ' The utmost gaudery of youth.' — South. 
^ Impropriate. Appropriate. 'A supercilious tyranny, impropriating the 

Spirit of God to tlicmselvcs.' — Milton. 



292 Of the True Greatness of Kingdoms^ (&c. [Essay xxix. 

triumphs to themselves and their sons, for such wars as they did 
achieve in person, and left only for wars* achieved by subjects 
some triumphal garments and ensigns to the general. 

To conclude. No man can by care-taking (as the Scripture 
saith) ' add a cubit to his stature,' in this little model of a man's 
body ; but in the great frame of kingdoms and commonwealths, 
it is in the power of princes, or estates, to add amplitude au,d 
greatness to their kingdoms ; for by introducing such ordinances, 
constitutions, and customs, as we have now touched,' they may 
sow greatness to their posterity and succession. But these things 
are commonly not observed, but left to take their chauce. 



ANNOTATIONS. 



* All states that are liheral of naturalization towards strangers 
are fit for empire^ 

What Bacon says of naturalization is most true, and important, 
and not enough attended to. But he attributes more liberality 
in this point to the Romans than is their due. He seems to 
have forgotten their ' Social War,' brought on entirely by their 
refusal to admit their subjects to civil rights. 

It is remarkable that, under the kings, and again under the 
emperors, there was the most of this liberality, and under the 
Republic, the least. This is quite natural : when it is the citizens 
that govern, they naturally feel jealous of others being admitted 
to an equality with them ; but the sovereign has no reason to 
wish that one class or portion of his subjects should have an in- 
vidious advantage over another. There is an exception to this 
in cases where religious fanaticism comes in ; as is to be seen 
in the Turkish empire, where christian subjects have always 
been kept as a kind of Helots. 

On the ruinons results of keeping a portion of the people in 
such a state, I have already dwelt in the notes to the Essay on 
'Seditions and Troubles.' 

A somewhat similar disadvantage in respect of advancement 



' Touch. To treat slightly. ' If the antiquaries have touched it, they have 
immediately quitted it.' — Addison. 



Essay xxix.] Annotations. 293 

in virtue, at least, would attend any community wliose institu- 
tions were such as tended to arm against the laws large bodies 
of such persons, as were not, in the outset, destitute of all 
moral principle, but whose mode of life was a fit ti-aining to 
make them become so. Such are poachers and smugglers. An 
excessive multiplication of the latter class is produced by the 
enactment of laws, whose object is, not revenue, but the 
exclusion of foreign productions for the supposed benefit of 
domestic industry. Whatever may be thought of the expediency 
of thase laws Math a view to national wealth, all must agree 
that the extension of smuggling must produce the most demo- 
ralizing eifects. 

* Howsoever it he for happiness ^ without all question, for greair 
ness, it maketh to he still for the most part in arms.^ 

It is consolatory to think that no one would now venture to 
write, as Bacon does, about wars of aggrandizement. But it 
was the doctrine of his day; and of times not only much 
earlier, but also much later than his ; for the same sentiments 
are to be found in authors near two centuries after Bacon. 

True it is, we are still bad enough in practice ; but the theory 
must come first ; and we may hope the practice will follow in 
time. It is certain that the folly as well as the wickedness of 
wars and aggrandizement is much better understood, and more 
freely acknowledged, than even fifty years back. And to the 
shame of Christians, it must be admitted that the more correct 
discernment of the costliness and consequent inexpediency of 
even a successful war of conquest — which are every day becom- 
ing better understood — operates more in making men pause 
before they enter into a war, than motives of humanity. 

What used to mislead men, and still misleads not a few as to 
the costliness of war, and the check it gives to national pros- 
perity is, that they see the expenditure go to our own fellow- 
subjects. We jiay a great deal, it is true, out of the public 
purse, to soldiers; but then it is our soldiei"s, the Queen's 
subjects, that get it. Powder, and guns, and ships of war, cost 
a great deal ; but this cost is a gain to the manufacturers of 
powder and guns, &c. And thus people brought themselves to 
fancy that the country altogether did not sustain any loss at 
25* 



294 Of the True Greatness of Kingdoms, (&c. [Essay xxix. 

all. Tliis very doctrine is distinctly maintained by Coleridge, 
in his periodical, The Friend, within the present century. He 
censures very strongly some who 4iad bewailed a ' few millions' 
of war expenditure, and who had pointed out how many roads 
might have been made, and fens drained, and other beneficial 
works accomplished with this money. Coleridge contends 
against this that the country had not lost it at all,, since it was 
all spent on our own people ; and he parallels it with such cases 
as that of a man losing money at cards to his own wife, oi* 
transferring it from one pocket to another. He was extremely 
fond of discussing what are really questions of political economy 
(though the name of it he disliked) and in which he almost 
always went wrong. 

Of course, if a heavy expenditure is incurred in armaments, 
when necessary for the defence of our just rights, this is not to 
be accounted a waste, any more than the cost of bolts and locks 
to keep out thieves. But the argument of Coleridge does not 
at all look to any such necessity, but would equally hold good 
if the money had been expended in gunpowder to be exploded 
in fire-works, or in paying soldiers for amusing us with sham 
fights, or for playing cricket. For, in that case also, the ex- 
penditure would have gone to our own people equally. 

The fallacy consists in not perceiving that though the labour 
of the gunpowder-makers, soldiers, &c., is not unproductive to 
them, inasmuch as they are paid for it, it is unproductive to us, 
as it leaves no valuable results. If gunpowder is employed in 
blasting rocks, so as to open a rich vein of ore or coal, or to 
make a useful road, the manufacturer gets his payment for it 
just the same as if it had been made into fire-works \ but then, 
the mine, or the road, will remain as an article of wealth to 
him who has so employed it. After having paid for the powder 
he will still be richer than he was before ; whereas, if he had 
employed it for fire-works, he would have been so much the 
poorer, since it w^ould have left no results. 

"When, however, war-expenditure does result in the conquest 
of some territory, and this territory brings in some tribute, or 
other profit beyond the cost of conquering it and keeping it in 
subjection — which is not often the case, — then, it must be 
admitted — waiving all considerations of justice and humanity — 
that something has been gained. But the revenue thus WTested 



Essay xxix.] Annotations, 295 

from a subjugated country must evidently impoverish tlie one 
party as much (at least) as it enriches the other. The people 
of the conquered territory have to jpay for heing ill governed; 
and their increase in prosperity is checked ; while the greater 
part of what is taken from them goes to pay the garrisons that 
keep them in submission. 

On the other hand, the revenue derived from other lands by 
commerce, enriches hoth parties ; since the exchange of a cargo 
of hardware, for instance, for a cargo of silks, implies that the 
one who parts with the silk for the hardware finds the latter 
the more valuable to him; and vice versa. And thus both 
advance in prosperity. 

From all the extensive provii^es which the Romans held 
under their sway, the English, without holding them in subjec- 
tion at all, derive many times the revenue that the Ronums 
did ; since our commerce with them has caused them to advance 
and to go on still advancing in prosperity. 

If the Czar had spent half wliat he has spent in encroaching 
on his neighbours, in making roads, and draining marshes, and 
in other ways improving his own soil, he would have had much 
more of the true ' greatness of empire,' and a greatness far less 
likely to be overthrown by other States. For, as a general 
rule. States are not exempt from the influences of the same 
causes which, in the aifairs of individuals, produce good or bad 
success. That the general tendency of each particular virtue 
and vice in individuals is, to produce corresponding worldly 
advantages and disadvantages, is a doctrine which, in a specu- 
lative point of view at least, tew would be disposed to contro- 
vert. And though this general rule admits of such numerous 
exceptions, that a right-minded and considerate man would not 
venture, in the case of any individual, to infer, that his success 
in life had precisely corresponded with his deserts, or decidedly 
to promise, for example, prosperity to the honest, frugal, and 
industrioiis, and denounce certain ruin to the profligate ; yet he 
would not feel the less convinced of the certainty of t\\Q general 
rule, — that such conduct will, for the most part, be attended 
with such consequences. Thus, though we are not to believe 
that regular temporal rewards and punishments are dispensed 
under the moral government of God to nations, yet the general 
rule by which temperance, and integrity, and industry tend, in 



296 Of the True Greatness of Kingdoms^ <&c. [Essay xxix. 

private life to promote each man's health, and reputation, and 
prosperity, is applicable to nations also. Unprincipled agres- 
sion will nsuallj provoke, sooner or later, a formidable retalia- 
tion ; and, on the other hand, moderation and good faith have 
manifestly a general tendency to promote peace and internal 
prosperity. 

And thus it is that religion, which produces these fruits of 
moderation and good faith, has an indirect, as well as a direct, 
influence on national character. Its direct effects few will be 
disposed to deny, even of those who believe in no religion ; since, 
of several diflerent form of superstitious error, supposing all 
religions to be such, one may at least be more compatible with 
moral improvement than ancj^lier. But it has an indirect eifect 
also, through its influence on national prosperity. To take, for 
instance, the point of which we have just been speaking : — ^War, 
the direct' demoralizing eff'ects of which are probably still greater 
than its impoverishing effect, would be wholly unknown, if 
Christianity were heartily and generally embraced ; and, even 
as it is, it has been much mitigated by that humanizing influ- 
ence. Slavery, too, equally demoralizing and impoverishing, 
would cease ; and if both Slavery and War were at an end, the 
wealth of nations would increase, — but their civilization, in the 
most important points, would increase in a still greater ratio. 

Tliat this progressive civilization, this advancement of man- 
kind, not merely as individuals, but as communities, — ^is the 
design of the Almighty Creator, seems evident from the provi- 
sion made by his divine Wisdom for the p?'og)'ess of society. 
This provision is, I think, manifest in many portions of man's 
conduct as a member of society, in which is to be traced the 
operation of impulses whicli, while tending immediately to some 
certain end contemplated by the agent, and therefore rational, 
may yet, as far as respects another and quite diiferent end he 
did 7iot contemplate, be referred to a kind of instinct^ or some- 
thing analogous to instinct, which leads him, while doing one 
thing by choice for his own benefit, to do another undesignedly, 
under the guidance of Providence, for the service of the 
community. 

But there is nothing in which this providential guidance 
is more liable to be overlooked — no case in which we are more 
apt to mistake for the wisdom of Man what is, in truth, the 
wisdom of God. 



Essay xxix.] Annotations. 2,9T 

In the results of instinct in brutes, we are sure, not only 
that, although the animals themselves are, in some sort, agents, 
they could not originally have designed the effects they pro- 
duced, but that even afterwards they have no notion of the 
combination by which these are brought about. But when 
human conduct" tends to some desirable end, and the agents are 
competent to perceive that the end is desirable, and the means 
well adapted to it, they are apt to forget that, in the great 
majority of instances, those means were not devised, nor those 
ends proposed, by the persons themselves who are thus em- 
ployed. The workman, for instance, who is employed in casting 
printing-types, is usually thinking only of producing a commodi- 
ty by the sale of which he may support himself; with reference 
to this object, he is acting, not from any impulse tliat is at all of 
the character of instinct, but from a rational and dehberate 
choice: but he is also, in the very same act, contributing 
most powerfully to the diffusion of knowledge ; about which, 
perhaps, he has no anxiety or thought ; in reference to this latter 
object, therefore, his procedure corresponds to those operations 
of various animals which we attribute to instinct ; since thetj, 
doubtless, derive some immediate gratification from what they 
are doing. Indeed, in all departments connected with the ac- 
quisition and communication of knowledge, a similar procedure 
may be traced. The greater part of it is the gift, not of human, 
but of divine benevolence, which has implanted in Man a thirst 
after knowledge for its own sake, accompanied with a sort of 
instinctive desire, founded probably on sympathy, of communi- 
cating it to others as an ultimate end. This, and also the love 
of display, are no doubt inferior motives, and will be superseded 
by a higher principle, in proportion as the individual advances 
in moral excellence. These motives constitute, as it were, a 
kind of scaffolding, which should be taken down by little and 
little, as the perfect building advances, but which is of indis- 
pensable use till that is completed. 

It is to be feared, indeed, that Society would tare but ill it 
none did service to the Public, except in proportion as they 
possessed the rare moral and intellectual endowment ot an 
enlightened public spirit. For, such a spirit, wliether in the 
form of patriotism, or that of philanthropy, implies not m-erely 
lenevolent feelings stronger than, in fact, we commonly meet 



298 Of the True Greatness of Kingdoms^ i&o. [Essay xxix. 

■with, but also powers of abstraction beyond what the mass of 
mankind can possess. As it is, many of the most important 
objects are accomplished by unconscious co-operation ; and that, 
with a certainty, completeness, and regularity, which probably 
the most diligent benevolence under the guidance of the greatest 
human wisdom, could never have attained. 

For instance, let any one propose to himself the problem of 
supplying with daily provisions the inhabitants of such a city 
as London — that ' province covered with houses.' Let any one 
consider this problem in all its bearings, reflecting on the 
enormous and fluctuating number of persons to be fed, — the 
immense quantity of the provisions to be furnished, and the 
variety of the supply (not, as for an army or garrison, compara- 
tively uniform) — the importance of a convenient distribution of 
them, and the necessity of husbanding them discreetly, lest a 
deficient supply, even for a single day, should produce distress, 
or a redundancy produce, from the perishable nature of many 
of them, a corresponding waste ; and then let him reflect on 
the anxious toil which such a task Avould impose on a Board 
of the most experienced and intelligent commissaries, who, after 
all, would be able to discharge their office but very inadequately. 
Yet this object is accomplished far better than it could be by 
any efl:brt of human wisdom, through the agency of men who 
think each of nothing beyond his own immediate interest — 
who are merely occupied in gaining a fair livelihood ; and with 
this end in view, without any conq^rehensive wisdom, or any 
need of it, they co-operate, unknowingly, in conducting a sys- 
tem which, we may safely say, no human wisdom directed to 
that end could have conducted so well — the system by which 
this enormous population is fed from day to day — and combine 
unconsciously to employ the wisest means for efitecting an object, 
the vastness of which it would bewilder them even to contem- 
plate. 

I have said, ' no human wisdom ;' for wisdoin there surely is 
in this adaptation of the means to the result actually produced. 
And admirable as are the marks of contrivance and design in 
the anatomical structure of the human body, and in the instincts 
of the brute creation, I know not whether it does not even still 
more excite our admiration of the beneficent wisdom of Pro- 
vidence, to contemplate, not corporeal particles, but rational, 



Essay xxix,] Annotations. 299 

free agents, co-operating in systems no less manifestly indicating 
design, yet no design of theirs ; and though acted on, not by 
gravitation and impulse, like inert matter, but by motives 
addressed to the will, yet advancing as regularly, and as effec- 
tually, the accomplishment of an object they never contemplated, 
as if they were the mere passive wheels of a machine. II' one 
may, without presumption, speak of a more or less in reference 
to the works of Inlinite Wisdom, I would say, that the branch 
of Natural Theology with which we are now concerned, presents 
to the reflective mind views even more striking than any other. 
The heavens do indeed 'declare the glory of God;' and the 
human body is 'fearfully and wonderfully made;' but Man, 
considered not merely as an organized Being, but as a rational 
agent, and as a member of society, is perhaps the most won- 
derfully contrived, and to us the most interesting, specimen of 
divine Wisdom that w^e have any knowledge of. HoXka ra 
Seiva k' ov6ev dvOpoj-rrov Ssivorepbv heXu. 

Now, it seems to me that, to this proof, that it is the design 
of almighty Providence that mankind should advance in civili- 
zation, may be added one drawn from the fact that, in proportion 
as the religion of the Bible is embraced, and men become 
subjects to the revealed law of God, civilization progresses. 

' And here I would remark, that I do not profess to explain 
why, in so many particular instances, causes have been permitted 
to operate, more or less, towar4s the frustration of this general 
design, and the retardation, or even reversal, of the course of 
improvement. The difficulty in fact, is one which belongs, not 
to this alone, but to every branch of Natural Theology. In 
every part of the universe we see marks of wise and benevolent 
design ; and yet we see in many instances appai'ent frustrations 
of this design ; we see the productiveness of the earth inter- 
rupted by unfavourable seasons — the structure of the animal- 
frame enfeebled, and its functions impaired, by disease — and 
vast multitudes of living Beings exposed, from various causes, 
to suffering, and to premature destruction. In the moral and 
political w^orld, wars, and civil dissension — tyrannical govern- 
ments, unwise laws, and all evils of this class, correspond to 
the inundations — the droughts — the tornados, and the earth- 
quakes, of the natural world. We cannot give a satisfactory 
account of either ; — we cannot, in short, explain the great diffi- 



300 Of the True Greatness of Kingdoms^ c&c. [Essay xxix. 

culty, which, in proportion as we reflect attentively, we shall 
more and more perceive to be the onl>/ difiicnlty in theology, 
the existence of evil in the Universe.' 

' But two things we can accomplish ; which are very impor- 
tant, and which are probably all that onr present faculties and 
extent of knowledge can attain to. One is, to perceive clearly 
that the difhculty in question is of no unequal pressure, but 
beai-s equally heavy on Deism and on Christianity, and on the 
various difierent interpretations of the christian scheme ; and 
consequently can furnish no valid objection to any one scheme 
of religion in particular. Even atheism does not lessen our 
difficulty ; it only alters the character of it. For as the believer 
in a God is at a loss to account for the existence of evil, the 
believer in no God is equally unable to account for the exis- 
tence of good ^ or indeed of anything at all that bears marks 
of design. 

' Another point which is attainable is, to perceive, amidst all 
the admixture of evil, and all the seeming disorder of conflicting 
agencies, a general tendency nevertheless towards the accom- 
plishment of wise and beneficent designs. 

'As in contemplating an ebbing tide, we are sometimes in 
doubt, on a short inspection, whether the sea is really receding, 
because, from time to time, a wave will dash further up the 
shore than those which had preceded it, but, if we continue our 
observation long enough, we see plainly that the boundary of 
the land is on the whole advancing ; so here, by extending our 
view over many countries and through several ages, we may 
distinctl}'^ perceive the tendencies which would have escaped a 
more confined research.' 



' Yet how many, in almost every past age (and so it will be, I suppose, in all 
future ages), have shown a tendency towards such presumption as that of our first 
parents, in seeking to pass the limits appointed for the human faculties, and to ' be 

as Gods, KNOWING GOOD AND EVIL.' 



ESSAY XXX. OF REGIMEN OF HEALTH. 

THEKE is a wisdom in this beyond the rnles of physic : a 
man's own observation, what he finds good of/ and what 
he finds hurt of, is the best j^hysic to preserve health ; bnt it is 
a safer conchision to say, 'This agreeth not well with me, 
therefore I will not continue it,' than this, ' I find no offence'' 
of this, therefore I may use it:' for strength of nature in 
youth passeth over many excesses which are owing a man till 
his age. Discern of the coming on of years, and think not to do 
the same things still ; for age will not be defied. Beware of 
sudden change in any great point of diet, and if necessity enforce 
it, fit the rest to it ; for it is a secret, both in nature and state, 
that it is safer to change many things than one. Examine thy 
customs of diet, sleep, exercise, apparel, and the like, and try, 
in anything thou shalt judge hurtful, to discontinue it by little 
and little ; but so as' if thou dost find any inconvenience by 
the change, thou come back to it again ; for it is hard to dis- 
tinguish that which is generally held good and wholesome, from 
that which is good particularly, and fit for thine own body. 
To be free-minded and cheerfully disposed at hours of meat* 
and sleep, and of exercise, is one of the best precepts of long 
lasting. As for the passions and studies of the mind, avoid 
envy, anxious fears, anger, fretting inwards, subtle and knotty 
inquisitions, joys and exhilarations in excess, sadness not com- 
municated. Entertain hopes, mirth rather than joy, variety of 
delights rather than surfeit of them ; wonder and admiration, 
and therefore novelties ; studies that fill the mind with splendid 
and illustrious objects, as histories, fables, and contemplations 
of nature. If you fly physic in health altogether, it will be too 
strange for your body when you shall need it ; if you make it 



* Of. From. See page 262. 

' Offence. Hurt ; damage. (Now seldom applied to physical injury.) ' The 
pains of the touch are greater than the offe^ices of other senses.' — Bacon. 
' To do offence and scath in Christendom.' — Shahespere. 
» As. That. See page 23. 

* Meat. Food ; meals. 

' As he sat at his meat, the music played sweet.' — Old Ballad. 



302 Of Begimen of Health. [Essay xxx. 

too familiar, it will work no extraordinary effect when sickness 
Cometh. I commend' rather some diet for certain seasons, 
than frequent nse of physic, except it be grown into a custom ; 
for those diets alter the body more, and trouble it less. Despise 
no new accident in your body, but ask opinion of it. In sick- 
ness, respect* health principally, and in health, action ; for those 
that put their bodies to endure in health, may in most sick- 
nesses which are not very sharp, be cured only with diet and 
tendering. Celsus could never have spoken it as a physician, 
had he not been a wise man withal, when he giveth it for one 
of the great precepts of health and lasting, that a man do vary 
and interchange contraries, but with an inclination to the more 
benign extreme ; use fasting and full eating, but rather full 
eating ; watching and sleep, but rather sleep ; sitting and exer- 
cise, but rather exercise, and the like ; so shall nature be 
cherished and yet taught masteries. Physicians are some of 
them so pleasing and conformable to the humour of the patient, 
as" they press not the true cure of the disease ; and some others 
are so regular in proceeding according to art for the disease, as 
they respect not sufficiently the condition of the patient. Take 
one of a middle temper, or, if it may not be found in one man, 
combine two of either* sort ; and forget not to call as well the 
best acquainted with your body, as the best reputed of for his 
faculty. 



ANNOTATIONS. 

It is remarkable that Bacon should have said nothing in this 
Essay, of early and late hours ; though it is a generally received 
opinion that early hours are conducive to longevity. There is 
a proverb that 

' Early to bed, and early to rise, 
Makes a man healthy, and wealthy, and wise.' 



* Commend. To recommend. ' I cmnmcnd unto you Phoebe, our sister.' — 
Romans xvi. 1. 

'Respect. Have regard to. 'In judgment seats, not man's qualities, but 
ses only to be respected.' — Kettleworth. 
'• As. That. See page 23. 
' Either. Eack ' Cn cither ride of the river.' — Rev. x:;ii. 2. 



Essay xxx.] Aimofations. 303 

And this is tlic more remarkable as being tlie proverb of a 
nation whose hours are the latest of any. 

It is reported of some judge, that whenever a witness came 
before him of extraordinary age (as is often the case when 
evidence is required relative to some remote period) he always 
inquired into the man's habits of life ; and it is said that he 
found the greatest differences between them (some temperate, 
and others free-livers ; some active, and some sedentary), except 
in the one point that they were all early risers. 

On the connection between early hours and lougevity, the 
late Mr. Davison wittily remarked that this may be the mean- 
ing of the fabled marriage of Tithonus and Aurora. ' Longa 
Tithonum minuit senectus.' Some have said, that this matter 
admits of easy explanation. ' As men grow old they find them- 
selves tired early in the evening, and accordingly retire to rest ; 
and hence, in the morning, they find themselves wakeful, and 
rise.' N^ow, if it be stated as an ultimate fad^ not to be ac- 
counted for, that those who have kept late hours in their youth, 
adopt, from inclination, early hours as they grow old, then this 
statement, whether true or false (and it is one which would 
not be generally admitted), is at least intelligible. But if it be 
offered as an explanation, it seems like saying that the earth 
stands on an elephant, and the elephant on a tortoise, and the 
tortoise again, on the earth. An old man rises early because 
he had gone to bed early : and he goes to bed early, because he 
had risen early ! 

Some, when dissuading you from going to bed late, will urge 
that it is bad to have too little sleep ; and wdien advising you 
not to lie a-bed late, will urge that it is bad to have too much 
sleep ; not considering that early or late hours, if they do but 
correspond with themselves, as to the times of retiring and 
rising, have nothing to do with the quantity of sleep. For if 
one man goes to bed at ten, and rises at six, and another goes 
to bed at two in the morning, and rises at ten, each has the 
same number of hours in bed. K the one of these is (as is 
generally believed) more healthful than the other, it must be 
from some different cause. 

This may be relied on as a fact: a student at one of the 
universities, finding that his health was suffering from hard 
study and late houre, took to rising at five and going to bed at 



304 Of Begimen of Health. [Essay xxx. 

ten, all the year round ; and found liis health — though he read 
as hard as ever — manifestly improved. But he found himself 
unable to comjpose anything in the morning, though he could 
take in the sense of an author equally well. And having to 
write for a prize, he could not get his thoughts to flow till just 
about his usual bedtime. Thinking that this might have some- 
thing to do with the digestion, he took to dining two hours 
earlier, in the hopes that then eight o'clock would be to him 
the same as ten. But it made no difference. And after per- 
severing in vain attempts for some time, he altered his hours, 
and for one week, till he had finished his essay, sat up and 
wrote at night, and lay a-bed in the morning. He could revise 
and correct in the day-time what he had written ; but could not 
compose except at night. "When his essay was finished, he re- 
turned to his early habits. 

Now this is a decisive answer to those wdio say 'it is all 
custom ; you write better at night, because that is the time you 
have been accustomed to employ for study;' for here the 
custom w^as just the reverse. And equally vain is the expla- 
nation, that ' the night hours are quiet., and you are sure of 
having no interruption.'' For this student was sure of being 
quite free from interruption from five o'clock till chapel-time 
at eight. And the streets were much more still then than at 
midnight. And again : any explanation connected wuth day- 
light breaks down equally. For, as far as that is concerned, in 
the winter-time it makes no difference whether you have three 
hours more candle-light in the earlier part of the night or be- 
fore sunrise. 

There is something that remains to be explained, and it is 
better to confess ignorance than to offer an explanation that" 
explains nothing. 

One other circumstance connected with hours has not been 
hitherto accounted for — namely, the sudden cold which comes 
on just at the first peep of dawn. Some say the earth is gra- 
dually cooling after the sun has set, and consequently the cold 
must have reached its height just before the return of the sun. 

This theory sounds plausible to those who have had little or 
no personal experience of daybreak ; but it does not agree with 
the fact. The cold does not gradually mcrease during the 
night; but the temperature grows alternately warmer and 



Essay xxx.] Annotations. 305 

colder, according as the sky is clouded or clear. And all who 
have been accustomed to night-travelling must have often ex- 
perienced many such alternations in a single night. And they 
also find that the cold at day-break comes on very suddenly : 
so much so, that in spring and autumn it often happens that it 
catches the earth-worms, which on mild nights lie out of their 
holes : and you may often see a whole grass-plat strewed with 
their frozen bodies in a frosty morning. If the cold had not 
come on very suddenly, they would have had time to withdraw 
into their holes. 

And any one who is accustomed to go out before daylight 
will often, in the winter, find the roads full of liquid mud half- 
an-hour before dawn, and by sunrise as hard as a rock. Then 
those who had been in bed will often observe that ' it was a 
hard frost last night,' when in truth there had been no frost at 
all till day-break. 

Who can explain all these phenomena ? 

'■ As for the jpassions and studies of the mind, avoid . . . .' 

Of persons who have led a temperate life, those will have the 
best chance of longevity who have done hardly anything else 
but live ; — what may be called the neuter verbs — -not active or 
passive, but only heing : who have had little to do, little to 
suffer ; but have led a life of quiet retirement, without exertion 
of body or mind, — avoiding all troublesome enterprise, and 
seeking only a comfortable obscurity. Such men, if of a pretty 
strong constitution, and if they escape any remarkable cala- 
mities, are likely to live long. But much affliction, or much 
exertion, and, still more, both combined, will be sure to tell 
upon the constitution — if not at once, yet at least as years 
advance. One who is of the character of an active or passive 
verb, or, still more, both combined, though he may be said to 
have lived long in everything but years, will rarely reach the 
age of the neuters. 

26* u 



ESSAY XXXL OF SUSPICION. 

I O USPICIONS amongst tlionglits are like bats amongst birds, 
^ — they ever fly by twilight ; certainly they are to be repressed, 
or, at the least, well guarded, for they cloud the mind, they 
lose friends, and they check with' business, whereby business 
cannot go on currently' and constantly ; they dispose kings to 
tyranny, husbands to jealousy, wise men to irresolution and 
melancholy ; they are defects, not in the heart, but in the 
brain, for they take place in the stoutest natures, as in the 
example of Henry VII. of England. There was not a more 
suspicious man nor a more stout ; and in such a composition' 
they do small hurt, for commonly they are not admitted but 
with examination whether they be likely or no ; but in fearful 
natures they gain ground too fast. There is nothing makes a 
man suspect much, more than to know little ; and, therefore, 
men shoidd remedy suspicion by procuring to know more, and 
not to keep their suspicions in smother.* What would men 
have? — do they think those they employ and deal with are 
saints ? do they not think they will have their own ends, and 
be truer to themselves than to them? therefore there is no 
better way to moderate suspicions, than to account upon such 
suspicions as true, and yet to bridle them as false ; for so far a 
man ought to make use of suspicions as to provide, as if that 
should be true that he suspects, yet it may do him no hurt. 
[ Suspicions that the mind of itself gathers, are but buzzes ; but 
'suspicions that are artificially nourished, and put into men's 
(heads by the tales and whisperings of others, have stings. 
Certainly, the best mean' to clear the way in this same wood of 
suspicion, is frankly to communicate them with' the party that 



•' Check -with. Interfere with. See page 89. 

" Currently. With continued progression. ' Time, as it currently goes on, 
•establishes a custom.' — Hayicard. 

' Composition. Temperament. 'A very proud or a very suspicious temper, 
felseness, or sensuality .... these are the ingredients in the composition of that 
man -whom we call a scorner.' — Atterbury. 

* Smother. A state of being stifled. See page 263. 

* Mean. Means. See page 185. 

•' Communicate "with. Impart to. See page 262. 



Essay xxxi.] Annotations. 307 

lie suspects : for thereby he shall be sure to know more of the 
truth of them than he did before, and withal shall make that 
party more circumspect, not to give further cause of suspicion ; 
but this woukr not be done to men of base natures, for they, 
if they find themselves once suspected, will never be true. 
The Italian says, ' Sospetto licencia fede ;" as if suspicion did 
give a passport to faith ; but it ought rather to kindle it to 
discharge itself. 

ANTITHETA ON SUSPICION. 
Pro. Contra. 

* * * * ' Suspicio fidem absolvit. 

' Merito ejus fides suspecta est, quam ' He tvho is suspeci-ed is not on his 

suspicio labefacit. honour.' 

' The fidelity which suspicion over- 
tJirows. deserves to be suspected.' 



ANNOTATIONS. 

* Suspicions amongst tliouglds are like hats amongst birds, they 
ever fiy hy twilight.^ 

As there are dim-sighted persons, who live in a sort of per- 
petual ttoilight, so there are some who, having neither much 
clearness of head, nor a very elevated tone of morality, are 
perpetually haunted by suspicions of everybody and everything. 
Such a man attributes — judging in great measure from himself 
. — interested and selfish motives to every one. Accordingly, 
having no great confidence in his own penetration, he gives no 
one credit for an open and straightforward character, and will 
always suspect some underhand dealings in every one, even 
when he is unable to perceive any motive for such conduct, and 
when the character of the party affords no ground for suspi- 
cion (' Ill-doers are ill-deemers').' One, on the contrary, who 
has a fair share of intelligence, and is himself thoroughly up- 



^ Wotild. Shoidd. ' As for percolation, -R-hich belongeth to separation, trial 
would be made by clarifying, by a clarion of milk put into warm beer.' — Bacon's 
Jfat. History. 

* Suspicion releases faith. ^ See Proverbs for Copy-lines. 



308 Of Suspicion. [Essay xxxi. 

right, will be comparatively exempt from this torment. He 
knows, from consciousness, that there is one honest man in 
the world ; and he will consider it very improbable that there 
should be hut one. He will therefore look carefully to the 
general character and conduct of those he has to deal with ; 
suspecting those — ^and those only — who have given some indi- 
cations of a want of openness and sincerity, trusting those 
who have given proof of an opposite character, and keeping his 
judgment suspended as to those of whom he has not suificient 
knowledge. 

Sucli a man has (as was observed in the note on the Essay 
on ' Cunning') a better knowledge of human nature than another 
just equal to him in experience and sagacity, whose tone of 
morality is low. Eor he knows that there are knaves in the 
world ; and he knows also that there are honest men ; while the 
other can hardly be brought to believe in the existence of 
thorough'going honesty. 

And the frank and simple-hearted will deal better, on the 
w^hole, than the suspicious, even with those who are not of the 
very highest moral character. For these, if they find that they 
have credit for speaking truth, when there is no good ground 
for suspecting the contrary, and that insidious designs are not 
imputed to them without reason, will feel that they have a 
character to keep up or to lose : and will be, as it were, put 
upon their honour. But these same persons, perhaps, if they 
find themselves always suspected, will feel like the foxes in 
one of Gay's fables, wdio, finding that they had an incurably 
bad name for stealing poultry, thought that they might as Avell 
go on with the practice, which would, at any rate, be imputed 
to them. 

A dean of a college, at one of our universities, told an under- 
graduate, who was startled and shocked at finding his word 
doubted, that he could not trust the young men for speaking 
truth, for that they regarded a lie to the dean as no lie. And, pro- 
bably, this was really the case with the majority of them. For 
when they found that a man's word was not believed by him, 
they had no scruple about saying to him what was untrue ; on 
the ground that where no confidence was reposed, none could be 
violated. And these same men, when the office of dean was 
held by another Fellow, of opposite character, who put them on 



Essay xxxi.] Annotations. 309 

tlieir honour, never thought (except a very few utterly worthless 
ones) of telling a falsehood to fdm. 

A person who once held offices of high importance, and of 
vast difficulty and delicacy, was enabled to say, after more 
than thirty years' experience, that though he had been obliged 
to employ many persons in confidential services, and to im- 
part to them some most momentous secrets, he had never once 
had his confidence betrayed. No one of them ever let out an 
important secret confided to him, or in any way betrayed the 
trust reposed in him. Of course, this person did not trust 
indiscriminately; nor did he trust all to an equal extent. And 
he occasionally found men turn out worse than he had hoped : 
and often had plots and cabals formed against him, and had 
lies told to him. But he never was, properly speaking, ])e- 
trayed. He always went on the principle of believing that 
8ome men are thoroughly honest, and some utterly dishonest, 
and some intermediate ; and thoroughly trusting, or thoroughly 
distrusting, where he saw good reasons for doing so ; and sus- 
pending his judgment respecting the rest: not putting himself 
in their power — ^yet not making them objects of suspicion with- 
out cause, — but letting them see that he hoped well of them, 
and considered the presumption to be on the side of imiocence 
till guilt is proved. 

A man of an opposite character, who was long in a very high 
and important position, afforded matter for doubt and discussion 
among those who knew him, as to the opinion he entertained of 
mankind. Some thought that he had a very good, and some a 
very mean, estimate of men in general. And each w^ere, in a 
certain sense, right. He seems to have regarded all men as 
being what a pereon of truly elevated moral character would 
have called base and contemptible ; but he did not feel any 
such disapprobation or contempt for them, because he had no 
notion of anything better. He was a very good-humoured man, 
and far from a misanthrope; and he could no more be said to 
dislike or despise men for being nothing superior to what he 
thought them to be, than we should be said to despise horses 
or dogs for being no more than brutes. He may be said, 
therefore, to have thought very favourably of mankind, as think- 
ing most men to be as virtuous as any man need be, or could 
be — and as doing nothing that he, or any one, need be ashamed 



310 Of Suspicion. [Essay xxxi. 

of. And again, lie may be said to have thought very w?ifavour- 
ably of mankind, inasmuch as he had no notion at all of a 
character of exalted virtue, and regarded any indication of pure 
and high principle as afiectation and humbug, and always sus- 
pected every one of acting for such ends, and employing such 
means, as a really high-minded man would reject with disdain. 
Yet he was a very intelligent and acute man as far as regards 
the lower parts of human nature. His constant suspicion of 
inferior motives and underhand proceeding arose form the moral 
twilight of his mind. 

In reference to such suspicions as relate rather to things than 
persons— the doubts which sometimes flutter about in the occa- 
sional twilight of the mind respecting the evidence for important 
and well-established conclusions, I will talce the liberty of ex- 
tracting some admirable passages from the Edinhurgh Review 
for January, 1847, on ' The Genius of Pascal' : — 

' Neither has the understanding the absolute dominion in the 
formation of our judgments, nor does she occupy an 'unshaken 
throne.' A seditious rabble of doubts, from time to time, rise 
to dispute her empire. Even where the mind, in its habitual 
states, is unconscious of any remaining doubt, — where it reposes 
in a vast preponderance of evidence in favour of this or that con- 
clusion, — there may yet be, from one or other of the disturbing 
causes adverted to, a momentary eclipse of that light in which 
the soul seemed to dwell ; — ^a momentary vibration of that judg- 
ment which we so often flattered ourselves was poised for ever. 
Yet this no more argues the want of habitual faith than the 
variations of the compass argue the severance of the connection 
between the magnet and the pole ; or, than the oscilla- 
tions of the ' rocking stone' argue that the solid mass can be 
heaved from its bed. A child may shake, but a giant cannot- 
overturn it. 

' And, as a matter of fact., there are, we apprehend, very few 
who have not been conscious of sudden and almost unaccountable 
disturbances of the intellectual atmosphere, unaccountable even 
after the equilibrium has been restored, and the air has again 
become serene and tranquil. In these momentary fluctuations, 
whether arising from moral or physical causes, or from causes of 
both kinds — ^from nervous depression, or a fit of melancholy, or 



Essay xxxi.] Annotatio7is. 311 

an attack of pain, or harassing anxieties, or the loss of friends, 
or their misfortunes and calamities, or signal triumphs of base- 
ness, or signal discomfitures of virtue, or, above all, from con- 
scious neglect of duty — a man shall sometimes feel as if he had 
lost sight even of those primal truths on which he has been 
accustomed to gaze as on the stars of the firmament — bright, 
serene, and unchangeable ; even such truths as the existence of 
God, his paternal government of the world, and the divine 
origin of Christianity. 

'In these moods, objections which he thought had long since 
been dead and buried, start again into sudden existence. They 
do more, like the escaped genius of the Arabian JSfights, who 
rises from the little bottle in which he had been imprisoned, in 
the shape of a thin smoke, which finally assumes gigantic out- 
lines, and towers to the skies, these flimsy objections dilate into 
monstrous dimensions, and fill the whole sphere of mental vision. 
The arguments by which we have been accustomed to combat 
them seem to have vanished, or, if they appear at all, look 
diminished in force and vividness. If we may pursue the allu- 
sion w^e have just made, we even wonder how such mighty forms 
should ever have been compressed into so narrow a space. Eunyan 
tells us, that when his pilgrims, under the perturbation produced 
by i^revious terrible visions, turned the perspective glass towards 
the Celestial City from the Summits of the Delectable Moun- 
tains, their hands shook so that they c<5uld not steadily look 
through the instrument; yet they tJiought they saw something 
like the gate, and also ' some of the glory of the place.' It is 



ffriras 



even so with many of the moods in which other ' pil 
attempt to gaze in the same direction ; a deep haze seems to 
have settled over the golden pinnacles and the ' gates of pearl :' 
tliey, for a moment, doubt w^hether what others declare they 
have seen, and what they flatter themselves they have seen them- 
selves, be anything else than a gorgeous vision in the clouds ; 
and ' faith' is no longer ' the substance of things hoped for,' and 
the evidence of ' things not seen.' 

' And as there are probably few who have profoundly investi- 
gated the evidences of truth, who have not felt themselves for 
a moment at least, and sometimes for a yet longer space, as if 
on the verge of universal scepticism, and about to be driven 
forth, without star or compass, on a boundless ocean of doubt 



312 Of Susjpicion. [Essay xxxi. 

and perplexity, so these states of feeling are peculiarly apt to 
infest the highest order of minds. For if, on the one hand, 
these can best discern and estimate the evidence which proves 
any truth, they, on the other, can see most clearly and feel 
most strongly the nature and extent of the objections which 
oppose it ; while they are, at the same time, just as liable as the 
vulgar to the disturbing influences already adverted to. This 
liability is of course doubled when its subject, as in the case of 
Pascal, labours under the disadvantage of a gloomy temperament. 

'A circumstance which in these conflicts of mind often 
gives sceptical objections an undue advantage is, that the great 
truths which it is more especially apt to assail are generally the 
result of an accumulation of proof by induction, or are even 
dependent on quite separate trains of argument. The mind, 
therefore, cannot comprehend them at a glance, and feel at 
once theii* integrated force, but must examine them in detail by 
successive acts of mind, — just as we take the measurement of 
magnitudes too vast to be seen at 'once in successive small 
portions. The existence of God, the moral government of the 
world, the divine origin of Christianity, are all truths of this 
stamp. Pascal, in one of his Pensees, refers to this infirmity 
of the logical faculties. He justly observes — ' To have a series 
of prools incessantly before the mind is beyond our power.' 
D'en avoir toujours les preuves presentes, c'est trop d'aftaire. 

' From the inability of the mind to retain in perpetuity, or 
to comprehend at a glance a long chain of evidence, or the 
total eftect of various lines of argument, Pascal truly observes 
that it is not sufiicient for the security of our convictions, and 
their due influence over our belief and practice, that we have 
proved them, once for all, by a process of reasoning : — they 
must be, if possible, tinctured and coloured by the imagination, 
informed and animated by feeling, and rendered vigorous and 
practical by habit. His words are well worth writing : — 
' Reason acts slowly, and with so many views upon so many 
principles which it is necessary should be always present, that 
it is perpetually dropping asleep, and is lost, for want of having 
all its principles present to it. The aff'ections do not act thus ; 
they act instantaneously, and are always ready for action. It 
is necessary, therefore, to imbue our faith with feeling ; other- 
wise it will be always vacillating.' 



Essay xxxi.] Annotations. 313 

' It will not, of course, be imagined that, in tlie observations 
we have now made, we are disposed to be the apologisls of 
scepticism ; or even, so far as it is yielded to, of that transient 
doubt to which we affirm even the most powerful minds are not 
only liable, but liable in defiance of what are ordinarily their 
strong convictions. So far as such states of mind are involun- 
tary (and for an instant they often are, till, in fact, the mind 
collects itself, and repels them), they are of course the object, 
not of blame, but of pity. So far as they are dependent upon 
fluctuations of feeling, or upon physical causes which we can at 
all modify or control, it is our duty to summon the mind to 
resist the assault, and reflect on the nature of that evidence 
which has so often appeared to us little less than demonstra- 
tive. 

' We are not, then, the apologists of scepticism, or anything 
approaching it ; we are merely stating a psychological fact, for 
the proof of which we aopeal to the recorded confessions of 
many great minds, and to the experience of those Avho have re- 
flected deeply enough on any large and difficult subject to know 
wdiat can be said for or against it. 

' The asserted fact is, that habitual belief of the sincerest and 
strongest character is sometimes checkered with transient fits 



-no, not for a moment ; the mind may, in some of its 
moods, form a very diminished estimate of the evidence on 
which belief is founded, and grievously understate it accord- 
ingly. We believe that both these states of mind were occa- 
sionally experienced by Pascal — the latter, however, much more 
frequently than the former ; and hence, as we apprehend, are 
we to account for those passages in which he speaks of the evi- 
dence for the existence of a God, or for the truth of Christianity, 
as less conclusive than he ordinarily believed, or than he has at 
other times declared them. 

' At such times, the clouds may be supposed to have hung 
low upon this lofty mind. 

'So little inconsistent with a habit of intelligent faith are 
such transient invasions of doubt, or such diminished percep- 
tions of the evidence of truth, that it may even be said that it 
is only those who have in some measure experienced them, who 
can be said, in the liighest sense, to believe at all. He who 
27 



314 Of Susjncion. [Essay xxxi. 

lias never had a doubt, who believes what he believes for 
reasons which he thinks as irrefragable (if that be possible) as 
those of a mathematical demonstration, ought not to be said so 
much to believe as to know ; his belief is to him knowledge, 
and his mind stands in the same relation to it, however erro- 
neous and absurd that belief may be. It is rather he who believes 
— not indeed without the exercise of his reason, but without 
the full satisfaction of his reason — with a knowledge and ap- 
preciation of formidable objections — it is this man who may- 
most truly be said intelligently to believe." (Pages 213-217.) 
' Wise men assuredly consider it as a most important element 
in the education of their own children, not indeed that they 
should be taught to believe what they are told without any 
reason (and if they have been properly trained, a just confidence 
in the assurances of their superiors in knowledge will on many 
subjects be reason sufficient), yet, upon evidence far less than 
demonstration ; indeed, upon evidence far less than they will 
be able to appreciate, when the laps^of a few brief years has 
transformed them from children into men. We certainly expect 
that they will believe many things as facts which as yet they 
cannot fully comprehend — nay, which they tell us are, in appear- 
ance, paradoxical ; and to rest satisfied with the assurance, that 
it is vain to attempt to explain the evidence until they get older 
and wiser. We are accustomed even to augar the worst results 
as to the future course and conduct of a youth who has not 
learned to exercise thus much of j)ractical faith, and who flip- 



' The same thought is thus expressed in a short poem by Bp. Hinds : — 
'And the Apostles said unto the Lord, Increase our faith.' — Luke xvii. 5. 

' What ! gazing on your Saviour's face, 
And hstening to his word, 
Dared you to ask for furtlier grace, 
To credit all you heard? 

' Yet so it is ; belief springs still 
In soils that nurture doubt ; 
And we must go to Him who will 
The baneful weed cast out. 

'Did never thorns thy path beset? 
Beware — be not deceived ; 
He who has never doubted yet, 
Has never yet believed,' 



Essay xxxi,] Annotations. 315 

pantly, on the score of his not being able to comprehend them, 
rejects trutlis of which he yet has greater evidence, though not 
direct evidence, of their being truths, tlian he has of the con- 
trary. Now, ' if we have liad earthly fathers, and have given 
them reverence,' after this fashion, and when w,e have become 
men have applauded our submission as appropriate to our con- 
dition of dependence, 'shall we not much rather be subject to 
the Father of Spirits, and live?' If, then, the present be a 
scene of moral education and discipline, it seems fit in itself 
that the evidence of the truths we believe should be checkered 
with difficulties and liable to objections, not strong enough to 
force assent, nor so obscure as to elude sincere investigation. 

'God, according to the memorable aphorism of Pascal already 
cited, has afforded sufficient light to those whose object is to 
see, and left sufficient obscurity to perplex those who have no 
such wish. All that seems necessary or reasonable to expect, is, 
that as w^e are certainly not called upon to believe anything 
witJhOut reason, nor without a preponderance of reason, so the 
evidence shall be such as our faculties are capable of dealing 
with ; and that the objections shall be only such as equally 
baffle us upon any other hypothesis, or areinsoluble only because 
they transcend altogether the limits of the human understand- 
ing : which last circumstance can be no valid reason, apart from 
other grounds, either for accepting or rejecting a given dogma. 

' Now, we contend, that it is in this equitable way that God 
has dealt with us as moral agents, in relation to all the great 
truths which lie at the basis of religion and morals ; and, we 
may add, in relation to the divine origin of Christianity. The 
evidence is all of such a nature as we are accustomed every 
day to deal with and to act upon ; while the objections are 
either such as reappear in every other theory, or turn on 
difficulties absolutely beyond the limits of the human faculties.* 
(Pages 217-218.) 



'It is much the same with the evidences of Christianity. 
Whether a certain amount and complexity of testimony are 
likely to be false ; whether it is likefy that not one, but a 
number of men, would endure ignomin;)^ persecution, and the 
last extremities of torture, in support of an unprofitable lie; 



316 Of Susj)icion. [Essay xxxi. 

wlietlier sucli an original fiction as Christianity — if it "be fiction — 
is likely to have been the production of Galilean peasants; 
whether anything so sublime was to be expected from fools, or 
anythiug so lioly from knaves ; wliether illiterate fraud was likely 
to be equal ta such a wonderful fabrication ; whether infinite 
artifice may be expected from ignorance, or a perfectly natural 
and successful assumption of truth from impostui'e : — these, and 
a multitude of the like questions, are precisely of the same nor 
ture^ however they may be decided, with those with which the 
historian and the advocate, judges and courts of law, are every 
day required to deal. On the other hand, whether miracles have 
ever been, or are ever likely to be, admitted in the administra- 
tion of the universe, is a question on which it would demand a 
far more comprehensive knowledge of that administration than 
we can possibly possess, to justify an a priori decision. That 
they are possible, is all that is required ; and that, no consistent 
theist can deny. Other difficulties of Christianity, as Bishop 
Butler has so clearly shown, baifle us on every other hypothesis ; 
they meet us as much in the ' constitution of nature,' as in the 
pages of revelation ; and cannot consistently be pleaded against 
Christianity without being equally fatal to theism. 

' There are two things, we will venture to say, at which the 
philosophers of some future age will stand equally astonished ; 
the one is, that any man should have been called upon to believe 
any mystery, whether of philosophy or religion, without a pre- 
ponderance of evidence of a nature which he can grasp, or on 
the mere ij^se dixit of a fallible creature like himself; the other, 
that where there is such evidence, man should reject a mystery, 
merely because it is one. 

' This last, perhaps, will be regarded as the more astonishing 
of the two. That Man — who lives in a dwelling of clay, and looks 
out upon the illimitable universe through such" tiny windows 
— who stands, as Pascal sublimely says, between 'two infinitudes' 
• — who is absolutely surrounded by mysteries, which he over- 
looks, only because he is so familiar with them, — should doubt 
a proposition (otherwise well sustained) from its intrinsic diffi- 
culty, does not seem very reasonable. But when we further 
reflect that that very ftiind which erects itself into a standard 
of all things, is, of all^hings, the most ignorant of that which it 
ought to know best — ^itself, and finds there the most inscrutable 



Essay xxxi.] Annotations. 317 

of all mysteries, — wlien we reflect that when asked to declare 
what itself is, it is obliged to confess that it knows nothing about 
the matter — nothing either of its own essence or its mode of 
operation, — that it is sometimes inclined to think itself material, 
and sometimes iimnaterial — that it cannot quite come to a con- 
clusion whether the body really exists, or is a phantom, or in 
what way (if the body really exists) the intimate union between 
the two is maintained, — when we see it perplexed beyond expres- 
sion, even to conceive how these phenomena can be reconciled 
— proclaiming it to be an almost equal contradiction to suppose 
that matter can think, or the soul be material, or a connection 
maintained betM-een two totally different substances, and yet 
admitting that one of these must be true, though it cannot satis- 
factorily determine which, — when we reflect on all this, surely 
we cannot but feel that the spectacle of so ignorant a Being 
refusing to believe a proposition, merely hecause it is above its 
comprehension, is, of all paradoxes, the most paradoxical, and 
of all absm-dities, the most ludicrous.' (Pages 219, 220.) 

' There is nothing makes a man sxispect much., more than to hiom 
little / and., therefore., men should remedy suspicion hy pro- 
curing to hnow more.'' 

Tliis is equally true of the suspicions that have reference to 
things as of persons. I extract a passage bearing upon this 
point, from the Cautions for the Times : — 

' Multitudes are haunted by the spectres, as it were, of vague 
surmises and indefinite suspicions, which continue thus to haunt 
them, just because they are vague and indefinite, — because the 
mind has never ventured to look them boldly in the face, and 
put them into a shape in which reason can examine them. 

' Now, would it not b^ an act of great charity towards such 
persona to persuade them to cast away their unreasonable 
timidity, and scrutinize such objections, instead of trying to 
banish them by force ? For though, no doubt, some difficulties 
and objections will always remain that cannot be directly cleared 
up or answered, yet the vastly greatest number of seeming 
objections and difficulties can be satisfactorily removed by care- 
ful examination and increased knowledge ; and the experience 
of this will lead us to be confident that, if we would propor- 
27* 



318 Of Suspicion. [Essay xxxi. 

tionately enlarge our facilities and acquirements (which is what 
we may hope for in a better world), the rest would vanish also. 
And, in the meanwhile, it is of great importance to know ex- 
actly what they are, lest our fancies should unduly magnify their 
number and weight ; and also in order to make us see that they 
are as nothing in comj)arison of the still greater difficulties on 
the opposite side, — namely, the objections which we should 
have to encounter, if we 7'ejected Christianity. 

' Well, but,' it is said, ' though that course may be the best 
for well-read and skilful Divines, it is better not to notice objec- 
tions generally^ for fear of alarming and unsettling the minds of 
plain unlearned people, who had probably never heard of any- 
thing of the kind. Let them continue to read their Bible with- 
out being disturbed by any doubts or suspicions that might 
make them uneasy.' 

' Now, if in some sea-chart for the use of mariners, the various 
rocks and shoals which a vessel has to pass in a certain voyage, 
were to be wholly omitted, and no notice taken of them, no doubt 
many persons might happen to make the voyage safely, and with 
a comfortable feeling of security, from not knowing at all of the 
existence of any such dangers. But suppose some one did strike 
on one of these rocks, from not knowing — though the makers 
of the chart did — of its existence, and consequently perished in 
a shijjwreck which he might have been taught to avoid, — on 
whose head would his blood lie ? 

' And again, if several voyagers came to suspect, from vague 
rumours, that rocks and shoals (perhaps more formidable than 
the real ones) did lie in their course, without any correct know- 
ledge where they lay, or how to keep clear of them, then, so far 
from enjoying freedom from apprehension, they would be ex- 
posed to increased alarm — and much of it needless alarm, — 
without being, after all, preserved from danger. 

' And so it is in the present case. Yague liints that learned 
men have objected to such and such things, and have questioned 
this or that, often act like an inward slow-corroding canker in 
the minds of some who have never read or heard anything dis- 
tinct on the subject; and who, for that very reason, are a]5t to 
imagine these objections, &c., to be much more formidable than 
they really are. For there are people of perverse mind, who, 
really possessing both learning and ingenuity, will employ these 



Essay xxxi.] Aiinotations. 819 

to dress tip in a plausible form something wliicli is, in truth, per- 
fectly silly : and the degree to which this is sometimes done, is 
what no one can easily conceive without actual experience and 
examination. 

'It is, therefore, often useful, in dealing even with the un- 
learned, to take notice of groundless and fanciful theories and 
interpretations, contained in books which probably most of them 
will never see, and which some of thcTn perhaps will never even 
hear of; because many persons are a good deal influenced by 
reports, and obscure rumours, of the opinions of some supposed 
learned man, without knowing distinctly what they are ; and 
are likely to be made uneasy and distrustful by being assured 
that this or that has been disputed, and so and so maintained, 
by some person of superior knowledge and talents, who has pro- 
ceeded on ' rational' grounds ; when, perhaps, they themselves 
are qualified by their own plain sense to perceive how /r-rational 
these fanciful notions are, and to form a right judgment on the 
matters in question. 

' Suppose you were startled in a dark night by something that 
looked like a spectre in a winding-sheet, — would not he who 
should bring a lantern, and show you that it was nothing but a 
white cloth hanging on a bush, give you far better encourage- 
ment than he who merely exhorted you to ' look another way, 
keep up your heart, whistle, and pass on V ' 



ESSAY XXXII. OF DISCOURSE. 

SOME in their discourse desire rather commendation of wit, 
in being able to hold all arguments, than of judgment, in 
discerning what is true ; as if it were a praise to know what 
might be said, and not what should be thought. Some have 
certain connnonplaces and themes, wherein they are good, and 
want variety ; which kind of poverty is for the most part tedious, 
and, when it is once perceived, ridiculous. The lionourablest 
part of the talk is to give the occasion ; and again to moderate 
and 23as.s to somewhat else, for then a man leads the dance. 
It is good in discourse, and speech of conversation, to vary and 
intermingle speech of the present occasion with arguments, 
tales with reasons, asking of questions with telling of opinions, 
and jest with earnest; for it is a dull thing to tire, and as we 
say now, to jade' anything too far. As for jest, there be certain 
things which ought to be privileged from it — namely, religion, 
matters of state, great persons, any man's present business of 
importance, and any case that deserveth pity ; yet there be 
some that think their wits have been asleep, except they dart 
out somewhat that is piquant, and to the quick — that is a vein 
which would be bridled : — 

' Parce puer stimulis, et fortius utere loris."' 

And, generally, men ought to find the difference between salt- 
ness and bitterness. Certainly, he that hath a satirical vein, 
as he maketli others afraid of his wit, so he had need be afraid 
of othei"s' memory. He that questioneth much shall learn 
much, and content much, but especially if he apply his questions 
to the skill of the persons whom he asketh, for he shall give 
them occasion to please themselves in speaking, and himself 
shall continually gather knowledge ; but let his questions not 
be troublesome, for that is fit for a poser ;' and let him be sure 



* Jade. To over-ride or drive. 

'I do not now fool myself to let imagination _;aJe me.' — Shakespere. 

' 'Boy, spare the spur, and more tightly hold the reins.' — Ovid, 3Iet. ii. 12'7. 

'Poser. Examiner. (From pose, to interrogate closely.) 'She posed him, 
and sifted him to try -whether he were the very Duke of York or not.' — Bacon's 
Senry VIL 



Essay xxxii.] Of Discourse. 321 

to leave other men their tm-ns to speak — nay, if there be any 
that would reign and take up all the time, let him find means 
to take them ofi\, and bring others on, as musicians use to do 
with those that dance too long galliards/ If you dissemble 
sometimes your knowledge of that^ you are thought to know, 
you shall be thought, another time, to know that you know not. 
Speech of a man's self ought to be seldom, and well chosen. 
I knew one was wont to say in scorn, ' He must needs be a 
wise man, he speaks so much of himself, — and there is but one 
case wherein a man may commend himself with a good grace, 
and that is in commending virtue in another, especially if it be 
such a virtue whereunto himself pretendeth," Speech of touch* 
towards others should be sparingly used ; for discourse ought 
to be as a field, without coming home to any man. I knew 
two noblemen, of the west part of England, whereof the one 
was given to scoff, but kept ever royal cheer in his house ; the 
other would ask of those that had been at the other's table, 
' Tell truly, was there never a flout' or dry blow given ?' To 
which the guest would answer, ' Such and such a thing passed.' 
The lord would say, ' I thought he would mar a good dinner.' 
Discretion of speech is more than eloquence ; and to speak 
agreeably to him with whom we deal, is more than to speak in 
good words or in good order. A good continued speech, 
without a good speech of interlocution, shows slowness ; and a 
good reply, or second speech, without a good settled speech, 
showeth shallowness and weakness. As we see in beasts, that 
those that are weakest in the course, are yet nimblest in the 



* Galliard. A sprightly dance. 

' Gay galliards here my love shall dance, 

"Whilst I my foes goe fighte.' — Fair Rosamond. 
' What is thy excellence in a galliard, Knight ?' — Shakespere. 

* That. What ; that which. See page 64. 

' Pretend to. Lay claim to. ' Those countries that jy^'etend to freedom.' — 
Swift. 

* Touch. Particular application. 'Dr. Parker, in his sermon before them, 
touched them for their being so near that they went near to touch him for his life.' 
— Hayward. 

* Flout. Jeer ; taunt ; gibe. 

' These doors are barred against a bitter fo7it ; 
Snarl if you please ; but you shall snarfwithout.' — Dryden. 
' Full of comparisons and wounding fotits.' — Shakespere. 



322 Of Discourse. [Essay xxxii. 

turn ; as it is betwixt the greyhound and the hare. To use 
too many circumstances' ere'' one come to the matter, is weaii- 
some ; to use none at all, is blunt. 



ANNOTATIONS. 

Among the many just and admirable remarks in this essay 
on ' Discourse,' Bacon does not notice the distinction — which is 
an important one — ^between those who speak because they wish 
to say something^ and those who speak because they liate some- 
thmg to say : that is, between those who are aiming at displaying 
their own knowledge or ability, and those who speak from ful- 
ness of matter, and are thinking only of the matter, and not of 
themselves and the opinion that will be formed of them. This 
latter, Bishop Butler calls (in reference to writings) ' a man's 
writing with simplicity and in earnest.' It is curious to observe 
how much more agreeable is even inferior conversation of this 
latter description, and how it is preferred by many, — they know 
not why — who are not accustomed to analyse their own feelings, 
or to inquire why they like or dislike. 

Something nearly coinciding with the above distinction, is that 
which some draw lietween an ' unconscious' and a ' conscious' 
manner ; only that the latter extends to persons who are not 
courting applause, but anxiously guarding against censure. By 
a ' conscious' manner is meant, in short, a continual thought 
about oneself, and about what the company will think of us. 
The continual effort and watchful care on the part of the 
speaker, either to obtain approbation, or at least to avoid dis- 
approbation, always communicates itself in a certain degree, to 
the hearers. 

Some draw a distinction, again, akin to the above, between 
the desire to please, and the desire io give pleasure ; meaning by 
the former an anxiety to obtain for yourself the good opinion 



* Circumstances. Non-essential particulars ; adjuncts. 

' This peroration, 'with such circumstance.' — Shakespere. 
" Ere. Before. ' The nobleman said unto him, Sir, come down ere mv child 
die.' — John iy. 49. 



Essay xxxii.] Annotatioii^. 323 

of those you converse with, and b}' the other, the wish to gratify 
tJiem. 

Aristotle, again, draws the distinction between the Eiron and 
the Bomolochus, — that the former seems to throw ont his wit 
for his own amnsement, and the other for that of the company. 
It is this latter, however, that is really the ' conscious' speaker ; 
because he is evidently seeking to obtain credit as a wit by his 
diversion of the company. The word seems nearly to answer 
to what we call a '■wag.'' The other is letting out his good 
things merely from his own fulness. 

When that which has bfeen called ' consciousness' is combined 
with great timidity, it constitutes what we call ' shyness ;' a 
thing disagreeable to others, and a most intense torture to the 
subject of it. 

Tliere are many (otherwise) sensible people who seek to cure 
a young person of that very common complaint, by exhorting 
him not to be shy, — telling him what an awkward apj)earance 
it has, — and that it prevents his doing himself justice, &c. 
All which is manifestly pouring oil on the fire to quench it. 
For, the very cause of shyness is an over-anxiety as to what 
people are thinking of you ; a morbid attention to your o\^n 
appearance. Tlie course, therefore, that ought to be pursued 
is exactly the reverse. The sufferer should be exhorted to 
think as little as possible about himself, and the opinion formed 
of him, — to be assured that most of the company do not 
trouble their heads about him, — and to harden him against any 
impertinent criticisms that be supposed to be going on, — taking 
care only to do what is right, leaving others to think and say 
what they will. 

And the more intensely occupied any one is with the subject- 
matter of what he is saying — the business itself that he is 
engaged in, — the less will his thoughts be turned on himself, 
and on what others think of him. 

A. was, as a youth, most distressingly bashful. When he was 
in Orders, he was staying at a friend's house, where there was 
also another clergyman, who was to preach, and who remarked 
to him how nervous he always felt in preaching in a strange 
churchy — asking whether the other did not feel the same. Per- 
haps he expected to be complimented on his modesty ; but A. 
replied, ' I never allow myself to feel nervous in preaching ; 



pm 



3M Of Discourse. [Essay xxxil. 

I dare not be thinking of myself, and of tlie opinion formed of 
me, when I have snch a momentous work in hand, as my 
Master's cause, and for the salvation of souls.' The other, a 
little taken by surprise, admitted that this was what a Christian 
minister ought to be occupied with ; ' but,' said he, ' he may be 
allowed, surely, to feel doubts as to his own qualification for so 
high and important an office.' 'True,' replied A., 'but the 
proper time for such doubts is hefore he takes Orders y after 
that, he should be thinkiug only of the work itself, and of 
striving to become more and more qualified for it.' 

As for the greater degree of nervousness [bashfulness] felt 
in addressing a large assembly than a few, I beg leave to 
extract a passage from my Elements of Rhetoric, in which I 
have endeavoured to account for this remarkable phenomenon, — 
for surely it must be considered as such, — ^that a person who is 
able with facility to express his sentiments in private to a friend, 
in such language, and in such a manner, as would be perfectly 
suitable to a certain audience, yet finds it extremely difficult to 
address to that audience the very same words, in the same 
mannei*, and is, in many instances, either completely struck 
dumb, or greatly embarrassed when he attempts it. ' Most 
persons are so familiar with the fact, as hardly to have ever 
considered that it requires explanation : but attentive con- 
sideration shows it to be a very curious, as well as important 
one ; and of which no explanation, as far as I know, has been 
attempted. It cannot be from any superior deference which 
the speaker thinks it i-ight to feel for the judgment of the 
hearers; for it will o;ften happen that the single friend, to 
whom he is able to speak fluently, shall be one whose good 
opinion he more values, and whose wisdom he is more disposed 
to look up to, than that of all the others together. The 
speaker may even feel that he himself has a decided and 
acknowledged superiority over every one of the audience ; and 
that he should not be the least abashed in addressing any two 
or three of them, separately ; yet, still, all of them, collectively, 
will often inspire him with a kind of dread. 

' Closely allied in its causes with the phenomenon I am con- 
sidering, is that other curious fact, that the very same senti- 
ments, expressed in the same manner, will often have a far 
more powerful effect on a large audience than they would have 




Essay xxxii.] Annotations, ■'■.^^y /{ i^' 325 



on any one or two of these very persons, separately. Tliat is in 
a great degree true of all men, which was said of the Athenians, 
that they were like sheep, of which a flock is more easily di-iven 
than a single one. 

' Another remarkable circumstance, connected with the fore- 
going, is the difference in respect of the style which is suitable, 
respectively, in addressing a multitude, and two or three even 
of the same pei-sons. A much holder, as well as less accurate, 
kind of language is both allowable and advisable, in speaking 
to a considerable number ; as Aristotle has remarked,' in speak- 
ing of the Graphic and Agonistic styles, — the former, suited to 
the closet, the latter, to public speaking before a large assem- 
bly. And he ingeniously compares them to the different styles 
of painting : the greater the crowd, he says, the more distant is 
the view ; so that in scene-painting, for instance, coarser and 
bolder touches are required, and the nice finish, which w^onld 
delight a close spectator, would be lost. He does not, however, 
account for the phenomena in question. 

' The solution of them will be found by attention to a very 
curious and complex play of sympathies which takes place in 
a large assembly ; and (within certain limits), the more, in pro- 
portion to its numbers. First, it is to be observed that we are 
disposed to sympathize with any emotion which we believe to 
exist in the mind of any one present ; and hence, if we are at 
the same time otherwise disposed to feel that emotion, such dis- 
position is in consequence heightened. In the next place, Ave 
not only ourselves feel this tendency, but we are sensible that 
others do the same ; and thus, w^e sympathize not only with the 
other emotions of the rest, but also with their sympathy towards 
lis. Any emotion, accordingly, which we feel, *s still further 
heightened by the knowledge that there are others present who 
not only feel the same, but feel it the more strongly in conse- 
quence of their sympathy with ourselves. Lastly, w^e are sen- 
eible that those around us sympathize not only with ourselves, 
but with each other also ; and as we enter into this heightened 
feeling of theirs likewise, the stimulus to our own minds is 
thereby still further increased. 

The case of the Ludicrous affords the most obvious illustra- 



' Rhetoric, Book iii. 



326 Of Discourse. [Essay xxxii. 

tion of these principles, from the circumstance that the effects 
produced are so open and palpable. If anything of this nature 
occurs, you are disposed, by the character of the thing itself, to 
laugh ; but much more, if any one else is known to be present 
whom you think likely to be diverted with it ; even though that 
other should not know of your presence ; but much more still, 
if he does know it ; because you are then aware that sympathy 
with your emotion heightens his : and most of all will the dis- 
position to laugh be increased, if many are present ; because 
each is then aware that they all sympathize with each other, as 
well as with himself. It is hardly necessary to mention the 
exact correspondence of the ftict with the above explanation. 
So important, in this case, is the operation of the causes here 
noticed, that hardly any one ever laughs when he is quite alone ; 
or if he does, he will find on consideration, that it is from a con- 
eeption of the presence of some companion whom he thinks 
likely to have been amused, had he been present, and to whom 
he thinks of describing, or repeating, what had diverted himself. 
Indeed, in other cases, as well as the one just instanced, almost 
every one is aware of the infectioics nature of any emotion, 
excited in a large assembly. It may be compared to the 
increase of sound by a number of echoes, or of light, by a 
number of mirrors j or to the blaze of a heap of firebrands, 
each of which would speedily have gone out if kindled sepa- 
rately, but which, w^lien thrown together, help to kindle each 
other. 

' The application of what has been said to the case before us 
is suificiently obvious. In addressing a large assembly, you 
know that each of them sympathize both with your own anxiety 
to acquit yourself well, and also with the same feeling in the 
minds of the rest. You know also, that every slip you may be 
guilty of, that may tend to excite ridicule, pity, disgust, &c,, 
makes the stronger impression on each of the hearers, from their 
mutual sympathy, and their consciousness of it. This augments 
your anxiety. Next, you know that each hearer, putting himself 
mentally in the speaker's place,' sympathizes with this aug- 



* Hence it is that shi/ persons are, as is matter of common remark, the more 
distressed by this infirmity when in company with those who are subject to the 



Essay xxxii.] Amiotations. 32Y 

mented anxiety ; which is by this thought increased still further. 
x\nd if you become at all embarrassed, the knowledge that there 
are so many to sympathize, not only with that embarrassment, 
but also with each other's feelings on the perception of it, 
heightens your confusion to the utmost. 

'The same causes will account for a skilful orator's being 
able to rouse so much more easily, and more powerfully, the 
passions'" of a multitude: they inflame each other by mutual 
sympathy, and mutual consciousness of it And hence it is 
that a bolder kind of language is suitable to such an audience ; 
a j)assage which, in the closet, might, just at the first glance, 
tend to excite awe, compassion, indignation, or any other such 
emotion, but which would on a moment's cool reflection, appear 
extravagant, may be very suitable for the Agonistic style ; be- 
cause, hefore that moment's reflection could take place in each 
hearer's mind, he would be aware that every one around him 
sympathized in that first emotion, which would thus become so 
much heightened as to preclude, in a great degree, the ingress 
of any counteracting sentiment. 

'If one could suppose such a case as that of a speaker 
(himself aware of the circumstance), addressing a multitude, 
each of whom believed himself to be the sols hearer, it is pro- 
bable that little or no embarrassment would be felt, and a 
much more sober, calm, and finished style of language would 
be adopted,' 

Tliere are two kinds of oratoi*s, the distinction between whom 
might be thus illustrated. When the moon shines brightly we 
are apt to say, ' How beautiful is this moon-Ught P but in the 
day-time, ' How beautiful are the trees, the fields, the moun- 
tains !' — and, in short, all the objects that are illuminated ; we 
never speak of the sun that makes them so. Just in the same 
way, the really greatest orator shines like the sun, making 
you think much of the things he is speaking of; the second- 
best shines like the moon, making you think much of Mm and 
his eloquence. 



328 Of Discourse. [Essay xxxii. 

' To use too many circumstances, ere you come to the matter^ is 
wearisome.'' 

Bacon might have noticed some who never 'come to the 
matter,' How many a meandering discourse one hears, in 
which the speaker aims at nothing, and — ^hits it. 

' If you dissemble sometimes your 'knowledge of that you are 
thought to hiow, you shall he thought, another time, to hiow 
that you know not.'' 

This suggestion might have come in among the tricks enu- 
merated in the essay on ' Cunning.' 



ESSAY XXXIII. OF PLANTATIONS/ 

PLANTATIONS are amongst ancient, primitive, and heroical 
works. "When the workl was young it begat more chil- 
dren, but now it is old, it begets fewer ; tor I may justly account 
new plantations to be the children of former kingdoms. I like a 
plantation in a pure soil, that is, where people are not dis- 
planted^ to the end to plant in others ; for else it is rather an 
extirpation than a plantation. Planting of countries is like 
planting of woods ; for you must make account to lose almost 
twenty years' profit, and expect your recompense in the end ; 
for the principal thing that hath been the destruction of most 
plantations, hath been the base and hasty drawing of profit in 
the first years. It is true, speedy profit is not to be neglected, 
as far as it may stand' with the good of the plantation, but no 
farther. 

It is a shameful and unblessed thing to take the scum of 
people and wicked condenmed men, to be the people with 
whom you plant ; and not only so, but it spoileth the planta- 
tion ; for they will ever live like rogues, and not fall to work, 
but be lazy, and do mischief, and spend victuals, and be quickly 
weary, and then certify over to their country to the discredit of 
the plantation. The people wherewith you plant ought to be 
gardeners, ploughmen, labourers, smiths, carpenters, joiners, 
fishermen, fowlers, with some few apothecaries, surgeons, cooks, 
and bakers. In a country of plantation, first look about what 
kind of victual the country yields of itself to hand ; as ches- 
nuts, walnuts, pine-apples, olives, dates, plums, cherries, wild 
honey, and the like, and make use of them. Then consider 
what victual or esculent things there are, which grow speedily, 
and within the year ; as parsneps, carrots, turnips, onions, ra- 



' Plantations. Colonies. 'Towns here are few, either of the old or ne^ir plan- 
tations.' — Heylin. 

" Displant. ' Those French pirates that displanted us.' — Beaumont and Fletcher. 

' Stand. To he consistent with. ' His faithful people, whatsoever they rightly 
aak, they shall receive, as far as may stand with the glory of God and their own 
everlasting good.' — Hooker. 

28* 



330 Of Plantations. [Essay xxxiii. 

dish, artichokes of Jerusalem/ maize, and the like : for wheat, 
barley, and oats, they ask too much labour ; but with peas and 
beans you may begin, both because they ask less labour, and 
because they serve for meat as well as for bread ; and of rice 
likewise cometh a great increase, and it is a kind of meat. 
Above all, there ought to be brought store of biscuit, oatmeal, 
flour, meal,'' and the like, in the beginning, till bread may be 
had. For beasts or birds, take chiefly such as are least subject 
to diseases, and multiply fastest : as swine, goats, cocks, hens, 
turkeys, geese, house-doves, and the like. Tlie victual in plan- 
tations ought to be expended almost as in a besieged town, that 
is, with certain allowance ; and let the main part of tlie ground 
employed to' gardens or corn be to* a common stock, and to 
be laid in, and stored up, and then delivered out in proportion ; 
besides some spots of ground that any particular person will 
manure lor his own private." Consider likewise, what commo- 
dities the soil where the plantation is doth naturally yield, tliat 
they may some way heljD to defray the charge of the plantation ; 
60 it be not, as was said, to the untimely prejudice of the 
main business, as it hath fared with tobacco in Virginia. 
y\J^ood commonly aboundeth but too much, and therefore tim- 
ber is fit to be one. If there be iron ore, and streams where- 
' upon jto set the mills, iron is a brave" commodity where wood 
aboundeth. Making of bay salt, if the climate be proper for 
it, would be put in experience ;' growing silk, hkewise, if any 
be, is a likely commodity ; pitch and tar, where store of firs 
and pines are, will not fail ; so drugs and sweet woods, where 



' Artichokes of Jerusalem. A well-known culinary plant, originally ' of Brazil : 
the#name Jerusalem being merely a corruption of the Italian Girasole — that is 
Sun-flower, or Turn-sole. 

* ' Flour' is still used in Suffolk to signify, exclusively, that which is finely sifted : 
and ' meal' that which comes from the mill. 

^ To. I71. ' Still a greater difficulty upon translators rises from the peculiari- 
ties every language has to itself.' — Felton. 

* To. For. See page 225. ' The proper business of the understanding is not 
that which men always employ it to.' — Locke. 

* Private. Particular use or benefit ; private object. 

' Nor must I be unmindful of my private. 
For which I have called my brother and the tribunes, 
My kinsfolk, and my clients, to be near me.' — Ben Jonson. 

* Brave. Excellent ; fine. ' A brave attendance.' — Shakespere. 
'Experience. Experiment; trial. ' As curious ca:^em«ces did affirm.' — Ray. 



Essay xxxiii.] Of Plantations. 331 

they are, cannot but yield great profit ; soaj) ashes likewise, and 
other things that may be thought of; but moiP not too much 
under ground, for the hope of mines is very uncertain, and 
useth to make the planfers lazy in other things. For govern- 
ment, let it be in the hands of one, assisted with some counsel, 
and let them have commission to exercise martial laws, with 
some limitation. And, above all, let men make that profit of 
being in the wilderness, as'' they have God always, and his 
service before their eyes. Let not the government of the planta- 
tion depend upon too many counsellors and undertakers' in the 
country that planteth, but upon a temperate number ; and let 
those be rather noblemen and gentlemen, than merchants ; for 
they look ever to the present gain. Let there be freedoms from 
custom, till the plantation be of strength, and not only freedom 
from custom, but freedom to carry their commodities where they 
may make their best of them, except^ there be some special 
cause of caution. Cram not in people, by sending too fast, 
company after company, but rather hearken' how they waste, 
and send supplies proportionably ; but so as the number may 
live well in the plantation, and not by surcharge be in penury. 
It hath been a great endangering to the health of some planta- 
tions, that they have built along the sea and rivers, in marish® 
and unwholesome grounds ; therefore, though you begin, there, 
to avoid carriage and other like discommodities,' yet build still 
rather upwards from the stream, than along it. It concerneth 
likewise the health of the plantation that they have good store 



' Moil. To toil ; to drudge. 

' lHovf he must moil and drudge for one he loathes.' — Dryden. 

* As. That. See page 23. 

* Undertakers. Managers of affairs. 

' Nay, if you be an undertaker, I am for you.' — Shakespere. 
— (now confined to the managers of funerals.) 

* Except. Unless. See page 259. 

* Hearken. Watch ; observe. 

' They do me too much injury, 
That ever said I hearkened for your death.' — Shakespere. 
I mount the terrass, thence the town survey. 
And hearken What the fruitful sounds convey.' — Dryden. 

* Marish. Marshy ; swampy. ' The fen and quagmire, so marish by kind, are 
to be drained.' — Tusser. 

' Discommodities. Inconveniences. ' "We stand balancing the discommodities of 
two corrupt disciplines.' — Milton. 



332 Of Plantations. [Essay xxxiii. 

of salt with them, that they may use it in their victuals when 
it shall be necessary. 

If you plant Avhere savages are, do not only entertain them 
with trifles and gingles, but use them justly and graciously, with 
sufficient guard, nevertheless : and do not win their favour by 
helping them to invade their enemies, but for tlieir defence, it 
is not amiss ; and send oft' of them over to the country that 
plants, that they may see a better condition than their own, 
and commend it when they return. 

When the plantation grows to strength, then it is time to 
plant with women as well as with men, that the plantation may 
spread into generations, and not be ever pieced from without. 
It is the sinfullest thing in the world to forsake or destitute' a 
plantation once in forwardness ; for, besides the dishonour, it is 
the guiltiness of blood of many commisserable' persons. 



ANNOTATIONS. 

' It is a shameful a/nd unhlessed thing to take the scum, of ^people 
a/nd wicked condemned ineA, to he the peojjle with whom you 
plant.^ 

Yet two-and-a-half centuries after Bacon's time, the English 
government, in opposition to the remonstrances of the en- 
lightened and most emphatically experienced philanthropist — 
Howard, — established its penal colonies in Australia, and thus, 
in the language of Shakespere, ' began an impudent nation.' 

It is now above a quarter of a century since I began pointing 
out to the public the manifold mischiefs of such a sj^stem ; and 
with Bacon and Howard on my side, I persevered in braving 
all the obloquy and ridicule that were heaped on me. But 
successive ministries, of the most opposite political parties, 



* Oft. Often (chiefly used in poetry). 

' Oft she rejects, but never once offends.' — Pope. 
" Destitute. To leave destitute. ' Suppose God thus destitute us, yet over- 
anxiety, or solicitude, or using of unlawful means, can never be able to secure us.' 
— Hammond. 

* Commisserable. Worthy of co^npassion. 'This commisserahle person, Edward.' 
— Bacon's Henry VII. 



Essay xxxiii.] Annotations. 383 

agreed in supporting what the most eminent political economist 
of the present day had described as a ' system begun in defiance 
of all reason, and persevered in defiance of all experience.' 

'•And not only so, hut it sj)oileth the jjlantation.^ 

Bacon has not pointed out one particular disadvantage of 
this mode of colonization. The emancipists, as they are called 
— those who have come out as convicts, — are described, and 
that by some advocates of the system, as for the most part idle, 
unthrifty settlers ; and the currency, those born in the colony, 
ai*e represented as generally p7'ef erring a seafaring life; having 
the odious associations of crime and slavery connected with agri- 
cultural pursuits, — a feeling perfectly natural under such cir- 
cumstances, but the very last one we would wish to find in a 
colony. One of the results — not, I apprehend, originally con- 
templated when penal colonies were established in New South 
"Wales by the English government, — is that these 'wicked con- 
demned men' have planted for themselves several volunteer- 
colonies ; escaping in small craft either to the South Sea Islands 
(in many of which, for a good while past, each native chief has 
for a prime-minister some choice graduate of the university of 
ISTewgate), or, more frequently, to some part of the coast of 
New Holland. Thus the land is certainly planted, but it is 
planted with the worst of weeds, according to the ingenious ex- 
periment suggested, in the Tempest, for Prospero's island : — 

' Gonzalo. Had I plantation of this isle, my lord .... 
Ayitonio. He'd sow it with nettle seed.' 

Tliis yas one of the arguments put forward by me, in the 
hope of awakening the public mind to the real character and 
extent of the evil, in a pamphlet in the form of a letter 
addressed to Earl Grey, from which I give some extracts. 

' The defenders of the system generally keep out of sight the 
inconsistency of professing to aim at the mutual benefit of the 
mother country and the colonies, on a plan which sets the two 
in direct opposition ; and present, separately and alternatel}'", 
the supposed advantage of 'getting rid' (as it is called) of 
criminals, and that of encouraging a gi'owing colony, so as to 
withdraw the attention from the real incompatibility of the 
two. 



33i Of Plantations. [Essay xxxiii. 

'In ot.lier subjects, as well as in this, I have observed tliat 
two distinct objects may, by being dexterously presented, again 
and again in quick succession, to the mind of a cm-sory reader, 
be so associated together in his thoughts, as to be conceived 
capable, when in fact they are not, of being actually combined 
in practice. The fallacious belief thus induced bears a striking 
resemblance to the optical illusion eifected by that ingenious 
and philbsophical toy called the ' thaumatrope ;' in which two 
objects painted on opposite sides of a card, — for instance, a man, 
and a horse, — a bird, and a cage, — are by a quick rotatory 
motion, made to impress the eye in combination, so as to form 
one picture, of the man on the horse's back, — the bird in the 
cage, &c. As soon as the card is allowed to remain at rest, the 
figures, of course, appear as they really are, separate and on 
opposite sides. A mental illusion closely analogous to this is 
produced, when, by a rapid and repeated transition from one 
subject to another, alternately, the mind is deluded into an idea 
of the actual combination of things that are really incompatible. 
The chief part of the defence which various writers have ad- 
vanced in favour of the system of penal colonies consists, in truth, 
of a sort of intellectual thaumatrope. The prosperity of the 
colony, and the repression of crime are, by a sort of rapid whirl, 
presented to the mind as combined in one picture. A very 
moderate degree of calm and fixed attention soon shows that 
the two objects are painted on opposite sides of the card. 

' In aid of this and the other modes of defence resorted to, a 
topic is introduced from time to time in various forms, which 
is equally calculated to meet all objections whatever on all sub- 
jects : — that no human system can be expected to be perfect ; 
that some partial inconvenience in one part or in another must 
be looked for ; and that no plan can be so well devised as not 
to require vigilant and judicious superintendence, to keep it in 
eftectual operation, and to guard against the abuses to which it 
is liable, &c. &c. 

' All this is very true, but does not in reality at all meet the 
present objections. Though we cannot build a house which 
shall never need repair, we may avoid such a misconstruction 
as shall cause it to fall down by its own weight. Though it be 
impossible to construct a time-piece which shall need no wind- 
ing up, and which shall go with perfect exactitude, we may 



Essay xxxiii.] Aimotations. 335 

guard against tlie error of making the wheels necessarily obstruct 
each other's motions. And though a plan of penal legislation, 
which shall unite all conceivable advantages and be liable to no 
abuses, be unattainable, it is at least something gained if we do 
but keep clear of a system which by its very constitution shall 
have a constant and radically inherent tendency to defeat our 
j^incipal object. 



' For, let any one but calmly reflect for a few moments on 
the position of a governor of one of our penal colonies, who has 
the problem proposed to him of accomplishing two distinct and 
in reality inconsistent objects : to legislate and govern in the 
best manner with a view to — 1st, the prosperity of the colony^ 
and also, 2ndly, the suitable punishment of the convicts. It is 
well known that slave lahour is the least profitable ; and can 
seldom be made profitable at all, but by the most careful, 
difficult, troublesome, and odious superintendence. The most 
obvious way, therefore, of making the labour of the convicts as 
advantageous as possible to the colony, is to make them as 
unlike slaves as possible, — to place them under such regulations, 
and with such masters, as to ensure their obtaining not only 
ample supplies both of necessaries and comforts, but in all respects 
favourable and even indulgent treatment ; in short, to put them 
as much as possible in the cornfoi'tahle situation lohich free 
labourers enjoy ^ where labour is so valuable, as from the abun- 
dance of land, and the scarcity of hands, it must be, in a new 
settlement. 

' And the masters themselves may be expected, for the most 
part, to perceive that their own interest (which is the only con- 
sideration they are expected to attend to) lies in the same 
direction. They will derive most profit from their servants, by 
keeping them as much as possible in a cheerful and contented 
state, even at the expense of connivance at many vices, and of 
so much indulgence as it would not, in this country, be worth 
any master's while to grant, when he might turn away an in- 
different servant and hire another. The master of the convict- 
servants would indeed be glad, for his own profit, to exact from 
them the utmost reasonable amount of labour, and to maintain 
them in a style of frugality equal to, or even beyond that of a 



336 Of Plantations. [Essay xxxiii. 

labourer in England : but lie will be sure to find that the attempt 
to accomplish this would defeat his own object ; and he will be 
satisfied to realize such profit as is within reach. He will find 
that a labourer who does much less work than would be requisite, 
here, to earn the scantiest subsistence, and who yet is incom- 
parably better fed than the best English labourer, does yet (on 
account of the great value of labour) bring a considerable profit 
to his master ; though to employ such a labourer on such tt -ms, 
would, in England, be a loss instead of a profit. It answers to 
him, therefore, to acquiesce in anything short of the most gross 
idleness and extravagance, for the sake of keeping his slave (for 
after all it is best to call things by their true names) in tolerably 
good humour, rather than resort to the troublesome expedient 
of coercion,' which might be attended with risk to his person or 
property from an ill-disposed character, and at any rate would 
be likely to make such a servant sulky, perverse, and wilfully 
neglectful. 

' It may easily be conceived, therefore, what indulgent treat- 
ment most of the convicts are likely to receive, even from the 
more respectable class of settlers. As for the large proportion, 
who are themselves very little diflerent in character, tastes, and 
habits, from their convict-servants, they may be expected usually 
to live (as the travellers who have described the colony assure 
us they do) on terms of almost perfect equality with them, 
associating with them as boon-companions. But, to say nothing 
of these, the more respectable settlers will be led, by a regard 
for their own interest, to what is called the humane treatment 
of their servants ; that is, to endeavour to place all those in their 
employ who are not much worse than such as, in this countiy, 
few would think it worth while to employ at all, in a better 
situation than the most industrious labourers in England. 

' Now, it is evident that the very reverse of this procedure is 
suitable for a house of correction^ — a place of punishment. And 
it is no less evident that a governor must be l6d both by his 



' ' To give some idea of the serious loss of time, as well as of the great trouble 
caused by being far removed from a magistrate alone, I need only state, that when 
a convict-servant misconducts himself, the settler must either send the vagabond 
to the nearest magistrate, not improbably some thirty or forty raWes distant, or he 
must overlook the oflFence.' — Excursions in New South Wales, by Lieutenant 
Breton. 



Essay xxxiii.] Annotations. 337 

feelings, — loj his regard for his own ease, — and by his wish for 
popularity with all descriptions of persons around him, as well 
as by his regard for the prosperity of the colony, to sacrifice to 
that object the primary and most important one, — of making 
transportation, properly, a penalty. We can seldom expect to 
find a governor (much less a succession of governors) willing, 
when the choice is proposed of two objects at variance with each 
other, to prefer the situation of keeper of a house of correction 
to that of a governor of a flourishing colony. The utmost we 
can expect is to find now and then one, crippling the measures 
of his predecessors and of his successors, by such efiforts to secure 
both objects as will be most likely to defeat both. But the in- 
dividual settlers, to whom is intrusted the chief part of the 
detail of the system, are not (like the governor) even called on 
by any requisition of duty, to pay any attention to the most 
important part of that system. They are not even required to 
think of anything but their own interest. The punishment and 
the reformation of convicts are only incidental results. It is 
trusted that the settler's regard for his own interest will make 
him exact hard labour and good conduct from the servants as- 
signed to him. But if indulgence is (as we have seen) likely to 
answer his purpose better than rigid discipline, he cannot even 
be upbraided with any breach of duty in resorting to it. 

' Of the many extraordinary features in this most marvellous 
specimen of legislation, it is one of the most paradoxical, that 
it entrusts a most important public service, in reference to the 
British nation, to men who are neither selected out of this 
nation on account of any supposed fitness to discharge it, nor 
even taught to consider that they have any public duty to perform. 
Even in the most negligently-governed communities, the keeper 
of a house of correction is always, professedly at least, selected 
with some view to his integrity, discretion, firmness, and other 
qualifications ; and however ill the selection may be conducted, 
he is at least taught to consider himself intrusted, for the public 
benefit, with an office which it is his duty to discharge on public 
grounds. However imperfectly all this may be accomplished, few 
persons would deny that it is, and ought to be, at least, aimed 
at. But this is not the case in the land of ornitTiorhynchus 
jparadoxus and of other paradoxes. There, each settler is, as 
far as his own household is concerned, the keeper of a house of 
29 T 



338 Of riantations. [Essay xxxiii. 

correction. To him, so far, is intrusted the pimishnient and the 
reformation of criminals. But he is not even called npon to 
look to these objects, except as they may incidentally further 
his own interest. He is neither expected nor exhorted to 
regulate his treatment of convicts v^ith a view to the diminu- 
tion of crime in the British Isles, but to the profits of his farm 
in Australia. 

'It is true, the settler may sometimes be, like other men, 
actuated by other feelings besides a regard to profit : but these 
feelings are not likely to be those of public spirit. When the 
convict does sutler hard usage, it is not much to be expected 
that this will be inflicted with a view to strike terror into offen- 
ders in Great Brttain, or to efi'ect any other salutary end of 
punishment. His treatment is likely to depend not so much 
on the character of the crime for which he was condemned, as 
on the character of his master. Accordingly, Colonel Arthur 
(p. 3), in enlarging on the miseries to which a convict is sub- 
jected, makes prominent mention of this, that ' he is conveyed 
to a distant country, in the condition of a slave., and assigned 
to an unknown master, whose disjposition, temper, and even 
caprice, he must consult at every turn, and submit to every 
moment.' 

' Colonel Arthur (p. 23) falls into an inaccuracy of language 
which tends to keep out of sight a most important practical 
distinction. He says : ' With regard to the fact that convicts 
are treated as slaves, any difficulty that can be raised upon it 
must hold good whenever penitentiary or prison discipline is 
inflicted.' If by a ' slave' be meant any one who is suhjected to 
the control of another, this is true. But the word is not in 
general thus applied. It is not usual to speak of children as 
■slaves to their schoolmasters, or to their parents ; or of prisoners 

being slaves of the jailer ; or soldiers of their ofiicers. By 

slaves we generally understand, persons w^hom their master 
compels to workybr his own henefit. And in this sense Colonel 
Arthur himself (]3. 2) applies the term (I think very properly) 
to the assigned convict-servants. 

' It is observed by Homer, in the person of one of his cha- 
racters in the Odyssey, that ' a man loses half his virtue the 
day that he becomes a slave ;' he might have added with truth, 
.that he is likely to lose more than half when he becomes a 



Essay xxxiil.] Annotations. 339 

slave^iaster. And if tlie convict-servants and their masters 
have any virtue to lose, no system conld have been devised more 
efFectnal for divesting them of it. Even the regular olRcial 
jailei-s, and governors of penitentiaries, are in danger of becom- 
ing brutalized, unless originally men of firm good principle. 
And great wisdom in the contrivance of a penitentiary-system, 
and care in the conduct of it, are requisite, to prevent the 
hardening and debasing of the prisoners. But when both the 
superintendent and the convicts feel that they are held in bon- 
dage, and kept to work by him, not from any views of jmhlio 
duty., but avowedly for his individual advantage., nothing can 
be imagined more demoralizing to both parties. 

* Among all the extravagances that are recorded of capricious 
and half-insane despots in times of ancient barbarism, I do not 
remember any instance mentioned, of any one of these having 
thought of so mischievously absurd a project as that of forming 
a new" nation, consisting of criminals and executionei-s. 

'But had such a tyrant existed, as should not only have 
devised such a plan, but should have insisted on his subjects 
believing, that a good moral effect would result from the inti- 
mate association together, in idleness, of several hundreds of 
reprobates, of various degrees of guilt, during a voyage of four 
or five months, and their subsequent assignment as slaves to 
various masters, under such a system as that just alluded to, it 
would have been doubted wdiether the mischievous insanity of 
wanton despotism could go a step beyond thi's. Another step 
however there is ; and this is, the pretence of thus benefitting 
and civilizing the Aborigines ! Surely those who expect the 
men of our hemisphere to believe all this, must suppose us to 
entertain the ancient notion of the vulgar, that the Antipodes 
are people among whom every thing is reversed. The mode of 
civilization practised, is of a piece with the rest. 

' They have, (says one of the writers on the Colony) been wan- 
tonly butchered ; and some of the christian (?) whites consider 
it a pastime to go out and shoot them. I questioned a person 
from Port Stephens concerning the disputes with the aborigines 
of that part of the colony, and asked him, if he, or any of his 
companions, had ever come into collision with them, as I had 
heard there prevailed much enmity between the latter and the 
people belonging to the establishment? His answer was, ' Oh, 



340 ' Of Plantations. [Essay xxxiii. 

we used to shoot tliem like fun !' It would have been a satia- 
faction to have seen such a heartless ruffian in an archery ground, 
with about a score of expert archers at a fair distance from him, 
if only to witness how well he would personify the representa- 
tions of St. Sebastian. This man was a shrewd mechanic, and 
had been some years at Port Stephens : if such people consider 
the life of a black of so little value, how is it to be wondered 
at if the convicts entertain the same opinion? It is to be 
hoped that the practice of shooting them is at an end; but 
they are still subjected to annoyance from the stock-keepers, 
who take their women, and do them various injuries besides.' — 
Breton, p. 200. 

'But to waive for the present all discussion of the moral 
effects on the settlers, likely to result from the system, let it 
be supposed that the labour of convicts may be so employed 
as to advance the prosperity of the colony, and let it only be 
remembered that this object is likely to be pursued both by 
governors and settlers, at the expense of the other far more 
important one, which is inconsistent with it, the welfare of the 
mother-country, in respect of the repression of crime. This 
one consideration, apart from all others, would alone be decisive 
against transportation as a mode of punishment ,• since even if 
the system coidd be made efficient for that object, supjyosing it 
to he well administered with a view to that, there is a moral 
certainty that it never will be so administered. 

' If there be, as some have suggested, a certain description 
of offenders, to whom sentence of perpetual exile from their 
native country is especially formidable, this object might easily 
be attained, by erecting a penitentiary on some one of the many 
small, nearly unproductiv-e, and unoccupied islands in the British 
seas ; the conveyance to which would not occupy so many hours, 
as that to Australia does weeks. 

' But as for the attempt to combine salutary punishment with 
successful colonization, it only leads, in j)ractice, to the failure 
of both objects; and, in the mind, it can only be effected by 
keeping up a fallacious confusion of ideas.' 



Essay xxxiii.] Annotations. 341 

* Plantations are amongst ancient, primiti've, and heroical 
works.'' 

Bp. Hinds remarks on the great success with which the an- 
cient Greeks colonized ; pursuing an opposite plan from that 
of all nations since, and accordingly, with opposite results. 

An ancient Greek colony was like what gardeners call a 
layer / a portion of the parent tree, with stem, twigs, and leaves, 
imbedded in fresh soil till it had taken root, and then severed. 
A modern colony is like handfuls of twigs and leaves pulled 
off^t random, and thrown into the earth to take their chance. 

* Above all, let men make that profit of heiiig in the wilderness^ 
that they have God always, and his service before their 
eyes.^ 

Every settler in a foreign colony is, necessarily, more or less, 
a missionary to the aborigines — a missionary for good, or a mis- 
sionary for evil, — operating upon them by his life and example. 

It is often said that our colonies ought to provide for their 
own spiritual wants. But the more is done for them in this 
way, the more likely they will be to make such provision ; and 
the more they are neglected, the less likely they are to do it. 
It is the peculiar nature of the inestimable treasure of christian 
truth and religious knowledge, that the more it is withheld from 
people, the less they w^Lsh for it; and the more is bestowed 
upon them, the more they hunger and thirst after it. If people 
are kept upon a short allowance of food, they are eager to obtain 
it ; if you keep a man thirsty, he will become the more and 
more thirsty ; if he is poor, he is exceedingly anxious to become 
rich ; but if he is left in a state of spiritual destitution, after a 
time he will, and still more his children, cease to feel it, and 
cease to care about it. It is the last want men can be trusted 
(in the first instance) to supply for themselves. 

29* 



ESSAY XXXIV. OF RICHES. 

"T CANNOT call riches better than the baggage of virtue ; the 
-^ Roman word is better — imfpedimenta ;^ for as the baggage 
is to an army, so is riches to virtue — it cannot be spared nor 
left behind, but it hindereth the march ; yea, and the care of it 
sometimes loseth or disturbeth the victory. Of great riches 
there is no real use, except it be in the distribution ; the rest is 
but conceit ; so saith Solomon, ' Where much is, there are many 
to consume it ; and what hath the owner but the sight (£ \i 
with his eyes V' The personal fruition in any man cannot reach 
to feel great riches : tliere is a custody o^ them, or a power of 
dole,' and a donative of them, or a fame of mem, but no solid 
use to the owner. Do you not see what feigned prices are set 
upon little stones or rarities — and what works of ostentation 
are undertaken, because* there might seem to be some use of 
great riches ? But then, you will say, they may be of use to 
buy men out of dangers or troubles ; as Solomon saith, ' Riches 
are as a stronghold in the imagination of the rich man :" but 
this is excellentl}^ expressed, that it is in imagination, and not 
always in fact ; for, certainly great riches have sold more men 
than they have bought out. Seek not proud riches, but such 
as thou may est get justly, use soberly, distribute cheerfully, and 
leave contentedly ; yet have no abstract or friarly contempt of 
them, but distinguish, as Cicero saith well of Rabirius Pos- 
tliumus, ' In studio rei amplilicandse, apparebat, non avaritise 
prsedam, sed instrumentum bonitati qua^ri.'" Hearken also to 
Solomon, and beware of hasty gathering of riches : ' Qui festinat 
ad divitias, non erit insons." The poets feign that when Plutus 
(which is riches) is sent from Jupiter, he limps, and goes slowly. 



' Impediments. Hindrances. * Eccles. v. 11. 

' Dole. A dealing out, or distribution. 

' It was your pre-surmise. 
That in the dole of blows, your son might drop.' 
* Because. For the reason that ; in order that See page 246. 
' Proverbs x. 15: cf. xxviii. 11. 

' ' In his desire of increasing his riches, he sought not, it was evident, the gra« 
tification of avarice, but the means of beneficence.' — Cic. P. Rabir. 2. 

' ' He that maketh haste to be rich, shaU not be innocent.' — Prov. xxviii. 20. 



Essay xxxiv.] Of Eiches. 343 

but when he is sent from Phito, he runs, and is swift of foot ; 
meaning, tliat riches gotten by good means and just labour pace 
slowly, but when they come by the death of others (as by the 
course of inheritance, testaments, and the like), they come 
tumbling upon a man: but it might be applied likewise to Pluto 
taking him for the Devil ; for when riches come from the Deyil 
(as by ^raud, and oppression, and unjust means) they come upon' 
speed. The ways to enrich are many, and most of them foul ; 
pai-simony is one of the best, and yet is not innocent, for it 
withholdeth men from works of liberality and charity. The 
improvement of the ground is the most natural obtiiining of 
riches, for it is our great mother's blessing, the earth ; but it is 
slow: and yet, where men of great wealth do stoop to husbandry, 
it multiplieth riches exceedingly. I knew a nobleman of England 
that had the greatest audits of any man in my time, — a great 
grazier, a great sheep master, a great timber man, a great col- 
lier, a great corn master, a great lead man, and so of iron, and 
a number of the like points of husbandry ; so as the earth seemed 
a sea to him in respect of the perpetual importation. It was 
truly observed by one, 'That himself came very hardly to little 
riches, and very easily to great riches ;' for when a man's stock 
is come to that, tliat he can expect* the prime of markets, and 
overcome' those bargains, which for their greatness are few 
men's money, and the partner in the industries of younger men, 
he cannot but increase mainly." The gains of ordinary trades 
and vocations* are honest, and furthered by two things, chiefly, 
by diligence, and by a good name for good and fair dealing ; 
but the gains of bargains are of a more doubtful nature, when 
men shall wait upon others' necessity ; broke' by servants, 



* Upon, At 

' Take upwi command what help we have.' — Shakespere. 
' Expect. To wait for. ' Elihu had expected till Job had spoken.' — Job xxxii. 14 
(marginal reading). 

'. . . Expeetinxj till his enemies be made his footstool.' — Heb. x. 13. 

* Overcome. Come vpou. 

W ■" ' Can such things be, 

And overcome us, like a summer's cloud. 
Without our special wonder ?' — Shakespere. 

* Mainly. Greatly. 

' You, mainly are stirred up.' — Shakespere. 

* Vocation. See page 20. 

* Broke. To traffic ; to deal meanly. ' This divine, contrary to his profession. 



344: * Of Riches. [Essay xxxiv 

and instruments to draw tliem on; put off others cunningly 
that would be better chapmen/ and the like practices, which 
are crafty and naughty.* As for the chopping of bargains, when 
a man buys not to hold, but to sell over again, that commonly 
grindeth double, both upon the seller and upon the buyer. 
Sharings do greatly enrich, if the hands be well chosen that are 
trusted. Usury is the certainest means of gain, though one of 
the worst, as that whereby a man doth eat his bread, ' in sudm^e 
vultus alieni,''^ and besides, doth plough upon Sundays : but yet 
certain though it be, it hath flaws : for that the scriveners and 
brokers do value unsound men to serve their own turn. The 
fortune in being the first in an invention, or in a privilege, doth 
cause sometimes a wonderful overgrowth in riches ; as it was 
with the first sugar man in the Canaries : therefore, if a man 
can play the true logician, to have as well judgment as inven- 
tion, he may do great matters, especially if the times be fit. 
He that resteth upon gains certain, shall hardly grow to great 
riches ; and he that puts all upon adventures, doth oftentimes 
break and come to poverty : it is good, therefore, to guard ad- 
ventures with certainties that may uphold losses. Monopolies, 
and coemption of wares for re-sale, where they are not restrained, 
are great means to enrich ; especially if the party have intelli-^ 
gence what things are like to come into request, and so store 
himself beforehand. Riches gotten by service, though it be of 
the best rise, yet when they are gotten by flattery, feeding 
humours, and other servile conditions, they may be placed 
amongst the worst. As for ' fishing for testaments and execu- 
torships,' (as Tacitus saith of Seneca, 'Testamenta et orbos 
tanquam indagine capi'^) it is yet worse, by how much men 
submit themselves to meaner persons than in service. 

Believe not much them that seem to despise riches, for they 
despise them that despair of them ; and none worse when they 
come to them. Be not penny-wise ; riches have wings, and 
sometimes they fl.y away of themselves, sometimes they must be 

took upon him to broke for him in such a manner as -wWnever precedented by 
any.' — Proceedings in the House of Conirnons against Lord Bacon. 

* Chapmen. Purchasers. 

' Fair Diomede, you do as chapmen do — 
Dispraise the thing that they intend to buy.' — Shakespere. 
' Naught. Bad. ' The water is naught, and the ground barren.' — 2 Kings 
xL 19. ' ' In the sweat of another's brow.' 

* ' Wills and childless parents, taken as with a net.' — ^Tacit. An7i. xiil 42. 



Essay xxxiv.] 



Of Riches. 



3^5 



set flying to bring in more. Men leave tlieir riches either to 
their kindred, or to the Pubhc ; and moderate portions prosper 
best in both. A great estate left to an heir, is as a lure to all 
the birds of prey round about to seize on him, if he be not the 
better established' in years and judgment : likewise, glorious'' 
gifts and foundations are like sacrifices without salt ; and but 
the painted sepulchres of alms, which soon will putrify and cor- 
rupt inwardly. Therefore measure not thine advancements' by 
quantity, but frame them by measure : and defer not charities 
till death : for, certainly, if a man weigh it rightly, he that 
doth so is rather liberal of another man's than his own. 



Pro. 
' Divitias contemnunt, qui desperant. 
' niches are despised by those who 
despair of obtaining them.' 



' Dum philosophi dubitant utrum ad 
virtutem an voluptatem omnia sint re- 
ferenda, collige instrumenta utriusque. 

* \V7tile philosophers are debating 
whether virtue or pleasure be the ultimate 
good, do you provide yourself with the 
instruments of both.' 

' Virtus per divitias vertitur in com- 
mune bonura. 

' It is by means of wealth that virtue 
becomes a public good.' 



ANTITHETA ON RICHES. 

Contra. 

' Divitiarum magnarum vel custodia 
est, vel dispensatio qusedam, vel fama : 
at nullus usus. 

' Great wealth is a thing either to be 
guarded, or dispensed, or displayed; but 
which cannot be used.' 



' Non aliud divitias dixerim, quam 
impedimenta virtutis; nam virtuti et 
neeessariae sunt et graves. 

' niches are neither move nor less than 
the baggage of virtue ; for they are at 
once necessary and inconvenient appen- 
dages to it.' 

' Multi, dum divitiis suis omnia 
venalia fore crediderunt, ipsi imprimis 
venerunt. 

' Many who think that everything may 
be bought with their oimi wealth, have 
been bought themselves first.' 

'Divitisebona ancilla, pessima domina. 
' Wealth is a good handmaid, but a 
bad mistress.' 



' Stablish, To establish. ' Now our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God, even 
our FatheK, .... comfort your hearts, and stablish you in every good word and 
work.'— 2 Thess. xi. 16, 1*7. 

' Stop effusion of our Christian blood. 
And stablish quietness on every side.' — ShaJcespere. 

' Glorious. Splendid. ' Were not this glorious casket stored.' — ShaJcespere. 

Bacon's Latin original is — ' Fundationes gloriosse et splendidse in usus publicos.' 

'Advancement. Adva7ices; gifts in money or property. 'The jointure and 
advancement of the lady was the third part of the Principality of Wales. — Bacon's 
Eist. 



'346 Of Riches. [Essay xxxiy. 



ANNOTATIONS. 

^ I cannot call riches hetter than the haggage of virtue / tJte Roman 
word is letter, impedimenta it hindereth the march.'' 

In reference to the effect on the character, both of individuals 
and nations, of wealth and poverty, I will take leave to insert 
some extracts from the Lectures on Political Economy. 

' We should attend to the distinction between an individual 
and a community, when viewed as possessing a remarkable 
share of wealth. The two cases differ immensely, as far as the 
moral effects of wealth are concerned. For, first, the most 
besetting probably of all the temptations, to which a rich man, 
as such, is exposed, is that of pride — an arrogant disdain of 
those poorer than himself. Now, as all our ideas of great and 
email, in respect of wealth, and of everything else, are com- 
parative, and as each man is disposed to compare himself with 
those around him, it is plain, the danger of priding one's self on 
wealth, affects exclusively, or nearly so, an individual who is 
rich, compared with his own countrymen ; and especially one 
who is richer than most others in his own walk of life, and who 
reside in his own neighbourhood. Some degree of national 
pride there may be, connected with national wealth ; but this is 
not in general near so much tlie foundation of national pride as 
a supposed superiority in valour, or in mental cultivation : and 
at any rate it seldom comes into play. An Englishman who is 
poor, compared with other Englishmen, is not likely to be much 
puffed up with pride at the thought of belonging to a wealthy 
community. Nay, even though he should himself possess pro- 
perty, which, among the people of Timbuctoo, or the aboriginal 
Britons, would be reckoned great wealth, he will be more likely 
to complain of his poverty, than to be tilled with self-congratu- 
lation at his wealth, if most of those of his own class are as rich 
or richer than himself. And even one who travels or resides 
abroad, does not usually regard with disdain (on the score of 
wealth at least) those foreigners who are individually as well off 
in that respect as himself, though their nation may be poorer 
than his. And, on the other hand, those individuals who, in a 



Essay xxxiv.] Annotations. 34T 

poor country, are comparatively rich, are quite as much exposed 
as any to the temptation of pride. 

'As for what may be said respecting avarice, selfishness, 
worldly-mindedness, (fee, it may suffice to reply, that not only 
these vices are found as commonly in poor countries as in rich, 
but even in the same country, the poor are not at all less 
liable to them than the rich. Those in affiuent circumstances 
may be absorbed in the pursuit of gain ; but they may also, 
and sometimes do, devote themselves altogether to literature, 
or science, or other pursuits, altogether remote from this : 
those, on the other hand, who 7nust maintain themselves by 
labour or attention to business, are at least not the less 
liable to the temptation of too anxiously taking thought for the 
morrow. 

' Luxury, again, is one of the evils represented as consequent 
on wealth. Tlie word is used in so many senses, and so often 
without attaching any precise meaning to it, that great confusion 
is apt to be introduced into any discussion in which it occurs. 
"Without, however, entering prematurely on any such discussion, 
it may be sufficient, as far as the present question is concerned, 
to point out that the terms luxury, and luxurious, are consider- 
ably modified as to their force, according as they are applied 
to individuals or to nations. As an individual, a man is called 
luxurious, in comparison wath other men, of the same community 
and in the same w^alk of life with himself: a njttion is called 
luxurious, in reference to <)ther nations. The same style of 
living wdiich would be reckoned moderate and frugal, or even 
penurious among the higher orders, would be censured as ex- 
travagant luxury in a day-labourer : and the labourer, again, if 
he lives in a cottage with glass-windows and a chimney, and 
wears shoes and stockings, and a linen or cotton shirt, is not 
said to live in luxury, though he possesses what would be thought 
luxuries to a negro-prince. A rich and luxurious nation, there- 
fore, does not necessarily contain more individuals who live in 
luxury (according to the received use of the word) than a poor 
one ; but it possesses more of such things as would be luxuries 
in the poor country, wdiile in the rich one, they are not. The 
inclination for self-indulgence and ostentation is not necessarily 
less strong in poor than in rich nations ; the chief difference is, 
that their luxm-y is of a coarser description, and generally has 



34:8 Of liichea. [Essay xxxiv. 

more connection with gross sensuality. Barbarians are almost 
invariably intemperate. 

' As for efieminizing effects that have been attributed to 
national luxury, which has been charged with causing a decay 
of national energy, mental and bodily, no such results appear 
traceable to any such cause. Xenophon, indeed, attributes the 
degeneracy of the Persians to the inroads of luxury, which was 
cai'ried, he says, to such a pitch of effeminacy, that they even 
adopted the use of gloves to protect their hands. We probably 
have gone as much beyond them, in respect of the common style 
of living among us, as they, beyond their rude forefathers ; yet 
it will hardly be maintained that this nation displays, in the 
employments either of war or peace, less bodily or mental energy 
than our Anglo-Saxon ancestors. In bodily strength, it has 
been ascertained by accurate and repeated experiments, that 
civilized men are decidedly superior to savages ; and that the 
vrwre barbarian, and those who lead a harder life, are generally 
inferior in this point to those who have made more approaches 
to civilization. Tliere is, indeed, in such a country as this, a 
larger proportion of feeble and sickly individuals ; but this is 
because the hardship and exposure of a savage life speedily 
destroy those who are not of a robust constitution. Some 
there are, no doubt, whose health is impaired by an over- 
indulgent and tender mode of life ; but as a general rule it may 
safel}'^ be maintained, that the greater part of that over-propor- 
tion of infirm persons among us, as compared, for instance, 
with some wild North American tribe, owe, not their infirmity, 
but their life^ to the difference between our habits and those of 
savages. How much the average duration of human life has 
progressively increased in later times, is^probably well-known 
to most persons. 

' Lastly, one of the most important points of distinction 
between individuals and nations in respect to wealth, is that 
which relates to industry and idleness. Rich men, though they 
are indeed often most laboriously and honourably active, yet 
may, and sometimes do, spend their lives in such idleness as 
cannot be found among the poor, excepting in the class of 
beggars. A rich nation, on the contrary, is always an indus- 
trious nation ; and almost always more industrious than poor 
ones.' 



Essay xxxiv.] Annotations. 349 

. . . . ' Among poor and barbarian nations, we may find as 
much avarice, fraud, vanity, and envy, called forth, in reference 
perliaps to a string of beads, a hatchet, or a musket, as are to 
be found in wealthier communities.' 

' The savage is commonly found to be covetous, fre- 
quently rapacious, when his present inclination impels him to 
seek any object which he needs, or which his fancy is set on. 
He is not indeed so steady or so j>rovident, in his pursuit of gain, 
as the civilized man ; but this is from the general unsteadiness 
and improvidence of his character, — not from his being engrossed 
in higher pursuits. What keeps him poor, in addition to want 
of skill and insecurity of property, is not a philosophical con- 
tempt of riches, but a love of sluggish torpor and of present 
gratification. The same may be said of such persons as con- 
stitute the dregs of a civilized community ; they are idle, 
thoughtless, improvident ; but thievish. Lamentable as it is to 
see, as we may, for instance, in our own country, multitudes of 
Beings of such high quahfications and such high destination 
as Man, absorbed in the pursuit of merely external and merely 
temporal objects — occupied in schemes for attaining wealth and 
worldly aggrandizement, without any higher views in pursuing 
them, — we must remember that the savage is not ahove such a 
life, but helow it. It is not from preferring virtue to wealth 
— ^the goods of the mind to those of fortune — the next world 
to the present — that he takes so little thought for the morrow ; 
but, from want of forethought and of habitual self-command. 
The civilized man, too often, directs these qualities to an un- 
worthy object ; the savage, universally, is deficient in the quali- 
ties themselves. The one is a stream, flowing, too often, in a 
wrong channel, and which needs to have its course altered ; the 
other is a stagnant pool.' 

' There is one antecedent presumption that the advancement 
in national wealth should be, on the whole, favourable to moral 
improvement, from what we know of the divine dispensations, 
both ordinary and extraordinary. I am aware what caution is 
called for in any attempt to reason d priori from our notions 
of the character and designs of the Supreme Being. But in 
this case there is a clear analogy before us. We know that God 
placed the human species in such a situation, and endued them 
with such faculties and propensities, as would infallibly tend to 
30 



350 Of Riches. [Essay xxxiv. 

the advancement of society in "wealth, and in all the arts of life ; 
instead of either creating Man a different kind of Being, or 
leaving him in that wild and uninstrncted state, from which he 
could never have emerged. Now if the natural consequence 
of this advancement be a continual progress from bad to worse 
— if the increase of wealth, and the development of the in- 
tellectual powers, tend, not to the improvement, but rather 
to the depravation, of the moral character — we may safely pro- 
nounce this to be at variance with all analogy, — a complete 
reversal of every other appointment that we see throughout 
creation. 

' And it is completely at variance with the revealed Will of 
God. For, the great impediments to the progress I am speak- 
ing of are, war, and dissension of every kind, — insecurity of 
propertj^ — indolence, and neglect of providing for ourselves, and 
for those dependent on us. Now, God has forbidden Man to 
kill, and to steal ; He has inculcated on him gentleness, honesty, 
submission to lawful authority, and industry in providing for 
his own household. If therefore the advancement in national 
wealth, — which is found to be, by the appointment of Provi- 
dence, the result of obedience to these precepts — if, I say, this 
advancement naturally tends to counteract that improvement of 
the moral character, which the same God has pointed out to us 
as the great business of this life, it is impossible to avoid the 
conclusion, that He has given contradictory commands, — that 
He has directed us to pursue a course of action, which leads to 
an end the very opposite of what we are required by Himself 
to aim at.' 

But the opposite conclusion is, surely, much more in accor- 
dance with reason and experience, as with every rational wish, 
that as the Most High has evidently formed society with a 
tendency to advancement in national wealth, so, He has de- 
signed and fitted us to advance, by means of that, in virtue, and 
true wisdom, and happiness. 

^Believe not much them that seem to desjnse riches.'' 

Tlie declaimers on the incompatibility of wealth and virtue 
are mere declaimers, and nothing more. For, you will often 
find them, in the next breath, applauding or condemning every 



Essay xxxiv.] Annotations. 351 

measure or institution, according to its supposed tendency to 
increase or diminish wealth. You will find them not only 
readily accepting wealth themselves from any honourable 
source, and anxious to secure from poverty their children and 
all most dear to them, (for this might be referred to the preva- 
lence of passion over principle), but even offering up solemn 
prayers to Heaven for the prosperity of their native country ; 
and contemplating with joy a flourishing condition of her agri- 
culture, manufactures, or commerce ; in short of the sources of 
her wealtli. Seneca's discourses in praise of poverty would, 1 
have no doubt, be rivalled by many writers of this island, if one 
half of the revenues he drew from the then inhabitants of it, 
by lending them money at high interest, were proposed as a 
prize. Such declaimers against wealth resemble the Harpies 
of Yirgil, seeking to excite disgust at the banquet of which they 
are themselves eager to partake. 

' Ham no abstract or friarly contemj)t of them.'' 

The goods of this world are not at all a trifling concern 
to Christians, considered as Christians. Whether, indeed, we 
ourselves shall have enjoyed a large or a small share of them, 
will be of no importance to us a hundred years hence ; but it 
will be of the greatest importance, whether we shall have 
employed the faculties and opportunities granted to us, in the 
increase and diffusion of those benefits among others. For, in 
regard to wealth, as well as all those objects which the great 
moralist of antiquity places in the class of things good in them- 
selves, (dTiAwf dyaOa), more depends, as he himself remarks,' 
on the use we make of these bounties of Providence, than on 
the advantages themselves. They ar<?, in themselves, goods ; 
and it is our part, instead of affecting ungratefully to slight or 
to complain of God's gifts, to endeavour to make them goods to 
us, (?}|Uiv dyada), by studying to use them aright, and to pro- 
mote, through them, the best interests of ourselves and our 
fellow-creatures. Every situation in which man can be placed 
has, along with its own peculiar advantages, its own peculiar 



' Arist, i:th. b. v. o. 3, 



352 Of Eiches. [Essay xxxiv. 

difficulties and trials also ; which we are called on to exert our 
faculties in providing against. The most fertile soil does not 
necessarily bear the most abundant harvest ; its weeds, if neg- 
lected, will grow the rankest. And the servant who has 
received but one talent, if he put it out to use, will fare better 
than he who has been intrusted with five, if he squander or 
bury them. But still, this last does not sufier hecause he 
received five talents ; but because he has not used them to ad- 
vantage. 



ESSAY XXXV. OF PKOPHECIES. 

IMEAJST not to speak of divine prophecies, nor of heathen 
oracles, nor of natural predictions, but only of prophecies 
that have been of certain memory, and from hidden causes. 
Saith the Pythonissa' to Saul, ' To-morrow thou and thy sons 
shall be with me." Virgil hath these verses from Homer : 

' At domus ^nese cunctis dominabitur oris, 
Et nati natorum, et qui nascentur ab illis:" 

a prophecy, as it seems, of the Roman empire. Seneca the tra- 
gedian hath these verses : 

' Venient annis 
Sajcula sens, quibus Oceanus 
Vineula rerum laxet, et ingens 
Pateat tellus, Tiphysque novos 
Detegat orbes ; nee sit terns 
Ultima Thule:'* 

a prophecy of the discovery of America. The daughter of 
Polycrates dreamed that Jupiter bathed her father, and Apollo 
anointed him ; and it came to pass that he was crucified in an 
open place, where the sun made his body run with sweat, and 
the rain washed it.* Philip of Macedon* dreamed he sealed up 
his wife's belly; whereby he did expound it, that his wife 
should be barren ; but Aristander, the soothsayer, told him his 
wife was with child, because men do not use to seal vessels that 
are empty. A phantom that appeared to M. Brutus in his 
tent, said to him, ' PhiHppis iterum me videbis." Tiberius 
said to Galba, ' Tu quoque, Galba, degustabis imperium." In 
Vespasian's time there went a prophecy in the East, that those 
that should come forth of Judea should reign over the world ; 
which, though it may be was meant of our Saviour, yet Tacitus 



' Pythonissa. Pythoness. " 1 Sam. xxviii. 19. 

^ 'Over every shore the house of ^Eneas shall reign; his children's children, 
and their posterity likewise.' — uEneid, iii. 9Y. 

* "There shall come a time, in later ages, when Ocean shall relax his chains, 
and a vast continent appear; and a pilot shall find new worlds, and Thule shall 
be no more earth's bound.' — ^Sen. Med. xi. 375. 

* Hesiod, iii. 24. « Plut. Vit. Alexan. 2. 

' 'Thou shalt see me again at Philippi.' — Appian, Bell. Civ. iv. 134. 
» ' Thou, also, Galba, shalt taste of empire.'— Stat. Vit. Galba. 

30* z 



354, Of Prophecies. [Essay xxxv. 

expounds it of Vespasian/ Domitian dreamed, tlie night be- 
fore he was slain, that a golden head was growing out of the 
nape of his neck ;* and, indeed, the succession that followed him, 
for many years, made golden times. Henry YI. of England 
said of Henry VH. when he was a lad, and gave him water, 
'This is the lad that shall enjoy the crown for which we 
strive.' When I was in France, I heard from one Dr. Pena, 
that tlie queen-mother, who was given to curious arts, caused 
the king her husband's nativity to be calculated under a false 
name, and the astrologer gave a judgment that he should be 
killed in a duel ; at which the queen laughed, thinking her 
husband to be above challenges and duels; but he was slain 
upon a course at tilt, the splinters of the staff of Montgomery 
going in at his beaver. The trivial prophecy which I heard 
when I was a child, and Queen Elizabeth was in the flower of 
her years, was, 

'When hempe is spun, 
England's done.' 

whereby it was generally conceived, that after the princes had 
reigned which had the principal letters of that word hempe, 
which were Henry, Edward, Mary, Philip, and Elizabeth, 
England should come to utter confusion ? which, thanks be to 
God, is verified in the change of the name, for the king's style 
is now no more of England, but of Britain. There was also 
another prophecy before the year of eighty-eight, which I do 
-not well understand : 

' Tliere shall be seen upon a day, 
Between the Baugli' and the May, 
Tlie black fleet of Norway. 
Wlien that is come and gone, 
England build houses of lime and stone, 
For after wars shall you have none.' 

It was generally conceived to be meant of the Spanish fleet that 
came in eighty-eight ; for that the King of Spain's surname, as 
they say, is Norway. The prediction of Pegiomontanus, 

' Octogesimus octavus mirabilis annus ;* 

was thought likewise accomplished in the sending of that 



Tacit, Wvd. V. 13. ' Suet. Vit. Drnnit 23. 

Baugli. Bough (probably). ■* Eighty-eight, a wonderful year. 



Essay XXXV.] Of Projjhedes. 355 

great fleet, being the greatest in strength, though not in 
number, of all tliat ever swam upon the sea. As for Cleon's 
djt-eam,' I think it was a jest — it was, that he was devoured of^ 
a long dragon ; and it was expounded of a maker of sausages, 
that troubled him exceedingly. There are numbers of the like 
kind, especially if you include dreams, and predictions of 
astrology ; but I have set down these few^ only of certain credit, 
for example. My judgment is, that they ought all to be 
despised, and ought to serve but for winter-talk by the fire-side. 
Though when I say despised, I mean it as for belief — for other- 
wise, the spreading or publishing of them is in no sort to be 
despised — for they have done much mischief, and I see many 
severe laws made to suppress them. That that hath given them 
grace, and some credit, consisteth in three things. First, that 
men mark when they hit, and never mark when they miss ; as 
they do, generally, also of dreams. The second is, that probable 
conjectures, or obscure traditions, many times turn themselves 
into prophecies : while the nature of man which coveteth 
divination, thinks it no peril to foretell that which indeed they 
do but collect, as that of Seneca's verse ; for so much was then 
subject to demonstration, that the globe of the earth had great 
parts beyond the Atlantic, which might be probably conceived 
not to be all sea, and adding thereto the tradition in Plato's 
Timceus and his Atlaiiticus^ it might encourage one to turn it 
to a prediction. Tlie third and last, which is the great one, is, 
that almost all of them, being infinite in number, have been 
impostures, and by idle and crafty brains, merely contrived and 
feigned, after the event past. 



* Aristoph. Equit. 195. 
Of, By. ' Lest a man more honourable than thou be bidden o/him.' — Liike xiv. 
' Critias. 



356 Of Prophecies. pEssay xxxv. 



ANNOTATIONS. 

* The spreading or ;pnhlhMng of them is in no sort to le 
for they have done much mischief.'' 

A political prediction, publicly uttered, will often have liad, 
or be supposed to have bad, a great share in bringing about its 
own faltilnient. Accordingly, when a law is actually passed, 
and there is 7io reasonable hope of its rejpeal., we should be very 
cautious in publicly uttering predictions of dangers and discon- 
tents, lest we should thus become the means of engendering or 
aggravating them. He who gives out, for instance, that the 
people will certainly be dissatisfied with such and such a law 
is in this doing his utmost to make them dissatisfied. And 
this being the case in all unfavourable, as well as favourable, 
predictions, some men lose their deserved credit for political 
sagacity, through their fear of contributing to produce the evils 
they apprehend ; while others again, contribute to evil results 
by their incapacity to keej) their anticipations locked up in their 
own bosoms, and by their di-ead of not obtaining deserved 
credit. It would be desirable to provide for such men a relief 
like that which the servant of King Midas found, due care,, 
however, being taken that there should be no whispering reeds 
to divulge it. 

In another ' New Atlantis,' entitled An Expedition to the 
Intenor of New Holland^ a Prediction-office is supposed to exist 
in several of the States, namely, an establishment consisting of 
two or three inspectors, and a few clerks, appointed to receive 
from any one, on payment of a trifling fee, any sealed-up j?re- 
diction, to be opened at a time specified by the party himself. 
His name is to be signed to the prediction within ; and on the 
outer cover is inscribed the date of its delivery, and the time 
when the seal is to be broken. There is no pretence made 
to supernatm'al prophetic powers ; only to supposed political 
sagacity. 

Unless in some case in which very remarkable sagacity has 
been evinced, the predictions are not made public. But pre- 



Published by Bentley, 



Essay xxxv.] Annotations. 357 

viouslj to the appointment of any of the aiithoi^ to any piiblic 
office, the inspectors are bound to look over their register, and 
produce, as a set-off against a candidate's chiinis, any unsuc- 
cessful prediction he may have made. Many a man there is to 
whom important public trusts are committed, who, wherever 
such an institution had been established, would be found to 
have formally recorded, under tlie influence of self-conceit, liis 
own incapacity, 

* 3Ien TYiarTi, when they hit, and 7iever niarTc when they miss? 

Tliis remark, as well as the proverb, ' What is hit is history ; 
what is missed is mystery,' would admit of much generalization. 
The most general statement would be nearly that of the law 
maxim, 'De non apparentibus et non existentibus, eadem est 
ratio;' for in all matters, men are apt to treat as altogether 
non-existent, whatever does not come under their knowledge or 
notice. 

No doubt, if all the pocket-books now existing could be 
inspected, some thousands of memoranda would be found of 
dreams, visions, omens, presentiments, &c., kept to observe whe- 
ther they are fulfilled ; and when one is, out of some hundreds 
of thousands, this is recorded ; the rest being never heard of. 
So Bion, when showm the votive offerings of those who had been 
saved from shipwreck, asked, *■ Where are the records of those 
who were drowned in spite of their vows V 

Mr. Senior has remarked in his Lectures on Political Economy, 
that the sacrifice of vast wealth, on the part of a whole people, 
for the gain — and that, comparatively, a trifling gain — of a hand- 
ful of monopolists, is often submitted to patiently,' from the 
gain being concentrated and the loss diffused. But this w^ould 
not have occurred so often as it has, were it not that this diffu- 
sion of the loss causes its existence — that is, its existence as a 
loss so increased — to be unperceived. If a million of persons 
are each virtually taxed half-a-crown a year in the increased 
price of some article, through the prohibition of free-trade, per- 
haps not. above a shilling of this goes to those wdio profit by the 
monopoly. But this million of shillings, amounting to £50,000 



* See Annotations on Essay xxiii 



358 Of Prophecies. [Essay xxxv. 

per annum, is divided, perhaps, among fifty persons, who clearly 
j)ercevm whence their revenue is derived ; and who, when an 
income of £1000 is at stake, will combine together, and use 
every effort and artifice to keep up the monopoly. The losers, 
on the other liand, not only have, each, much less at stake, but 
are usually ignorant that they do lose by this monopoly ; else 
they would not readily submit to pay half-a-crown or even one 
shilling as a direct jpensioii to fifty men who had no claim on 
them. 

Again, an English gentleman who lives on his estate, is con- 
sidered as a public benefactor, not only by exerting himself — if 
he does so — in promoting sound religion, and pure morality, and 
useful knowledge,, in his neighbourhood, but also because his 
income is spent in furnishing employment to his neigJibourSj 
as domestics, and bakers, and carpenters, &c. If he removes 
and resides in France, his income is, in fact, spent on English 
cutlers and clothiers ; since it is their products that are exported 
to France, and virtually exchanged — though in a slightly cir- 
cuitous way, for the services of French domestics, bakers, and 
carpenters. But the Sheffield cutlers are not aware even of his 
existence ; while the neighbom-s of the resident proprietor trace 
distinctly to him the profits they derive from him. 

Again, one who unprofitably consumes in feasts, and fire- 
works, and fancy-gardens, &c., the labour of many men, is re- 
garded as a public benefactor, in furnishing employment to so 
many ; though it is plain, that all unproductive consumption 
diininishes by just so much of the wealth of the co\intry. He, 
on the contrary, who hoards up his money as a miser, is abused, 
though in fact he is (though without any such design) contri- 
buting to the public wealth, by lending at interest all he saves ; 
which finds its way, directly or indirectly, to canals, commerce, 
manufactures, and oi\\QY productive courses of expenditure. But 
this benefit to the public no one can trace ; any more than we 
can trace each of the drops of rain that find their way into the 
sea. On the other hand, the advantage to the individuals to 
whom the other is a customer, they distinctly trace to liim. 

Again, the increased knowledge of ' accidents and offences/ 
conveyed through newspapers, in a civilized coimtry, leads some 
to fancy that these evils occii/r more fi*equently, because they 
hear of them more, than in times of ' primitive simplicity.' But 



Essay xxxv.] Annotations. 359 

* there are no more particles of dust in tlie sun-beam than in the 
rest of the room ; though we see them better.' 

All these, and a multitude of other cases, come under the 
general formula above stated : the tendency to overrate the 
amount of whatever is seen and known, as compared with what 
is unknown, or less known, unseen, and indefinite. 

Under this head will come the general tendency to under- 
rate the preventive efi'ects of any measure or system, whether 
for good or for evil. K g. in the prevention of crime, it is plain 
that every instance of a crime committed, and of a penalty ac- 
tually inflicted, is an instance oi failure in the object for which 
penalties were denounced. We see the crimes that do take 
place, and the punishments ; we do not see th5 crimes that wovM, 
be committed if punishment were abolished. 



ESSAY XXXVI. OF AMBITIOK 

A MBITION is like choler, which is a humour that maketh 
-^^ men active, earnest, full of alacritj, and stirring, if it be 
not stopped ; but if it be stopped, and cannot have its way, it 
becometh adust,' and thereby malign and venomous ; so am- 
bitious men, if they find the way open for their rising, and still 
get forward, they are rather busy than dangerous ; but if they 
be checked in their desires, they become secretly discontent,* 
and look upon men and matters with an evil eye, and are best 
pleased when things go backward ; which is the worst property 
in a servant of a prince or State. Therefore, it is good for princes, 
if they use ambitious men, to handle it so as they be still pro- 
gressive and not retrograde ; which, because it cannot be with- 
out inconvenience, it is good not to use such natures at all ; for 
if they rise not with their service, they will take order^ to make 
their service fall with them. But since we have said, it were 
good not to use men of ambitious natures, except it be upon 
necessity, it is fit to speak in what cases they are of necessity. 
Good commanders in the wars must be taken, be they never so 
ambitious ; for the use of their service dispenseth* with the rest ; 
and to take a soldier without ambition is to pull off his spurs. 
There is also great use of ambitious men in being screens to 
princes in matters of danger and envy ; for no man will take that 
part except he be like a seeled' dove, that mounts and mounts, 



Adust. Fiery. 

' The same adust complexion has impelled 
Charles to the convent, Philip to the field.' — Pope. 
' Discontent. Discontented. 

' For e'er with goodness men grow discontent, 
Where states are ripe to fall, and virtue spent.' — Daniel. 
' Order. Measures. 

' While I take order for mine own affairs.' — Shakespere. 
' Dispense with. To excuse. 

' To save a brother's life. 
Nature dispenseth with the deed.' 
' SeeL To seal up the eyes ; to hoodwink ; to blind. (A term of falconry): 
' To seel her father's eyes up, close as oak.' — Shakespere. 



Essay xxxvi.] Of Ainbition. 301 

because lie cannot see about him, Tliere is use also of ana- 
bitious men in pulling down the greatness of any subject that 
overtops ; as Tiberius used Macro in the pulling down of 
Sejanus. Since, therefore, they must be used in such cases, 
there resteth' to sj^eak how they are to be bridled, that they 
may be less dangerous. There is less danger of them, if they 
be of mean birth, than if they be noble ; and if they be rather 
harsh of nature, than gracious and popular, and if they be 
rather new raised, than grown cunning" and fortified in their 
greatness. It is counted by some a weakness in princes to 
have favourites, but it is, of all others, the best remedy against 
ambitious great ones ; for when the way of pleasuring^ and dis- 
pleasuring* lieth by the favourite, it is impossible any other 
should be over great. Another means to curb them, is to 
balance them by others as proud as they ; but then there must 
be some middle counsellors to keep things steady, for without 
that ballast, the ship will roll too much. At the least, a prince 
may animate and inure" some meaner persons to be scourges to 
ambitious men. As for the having of them obnoxious' to ruin, 
if they be of fearful natures, it may do well, but if they be 
stout and daring, it may precipitate their designs, • and prove 
dangerous. As for the pulling of them down, if the affaim 
require it, and that it may not be done with safety suddenly, 
the only way is, the interchange continually of favours and dis- 



* Rest. To remain. 

' Fallen he is ; and now 
Wliat rests but tlmt the mortal sentence pass 
On his transgression.' — Milton. 
' Cunning. Experienced; skilful. ' Esau was a c?<«?iiH^7 hunter.' — Gen. :sxy. 27. 

* Pleasure (not used as a verb). To please ; to gratify. ' Promising both to 
give him cattle, and to pleasure him otherwise.' — 2 Maccabees xii. 11. 

' Nay, the birds' rural music, too 
Is as melodious and as free 
As if they sang to pleasure you.' — Cowlet/. 

* Displeasure. To displease. 

* Inure. To make use of. (From an old word — 'ure.') 'Is the warrant 
sufficient for any man's conscience to build such proceedings upon, as are and 
have been put in ure for the establishment of that cause.' — Hooker. 

* Obnoxious. Liable to ; in peril of ; subject to. 

' But what will not ambition and revenge 
Descend to ? Who aspires, must down as low 
As high he soar'd ; obnoxious, first or last. 
To basest things.' — Milton. 

31 



362 Of Ambition. [Essay xxxvi. 

graces,' whereby they may not know what to expect, and be, 
as it were, in a wood. Of ambitions, it is less harmful,* the 
ambition to prevail in great things, than that other to appear 
in every thing ; for that breeds confusion, and mars business ; 
but yet it is less danger to have an ambitious man stirring in 
business, than great in dependencies.^ He that seeketh to be 
eminent amongst able men, hath a great task, but that is ever 
good for the public ; but he that plots to be the only figure 
amongst cyphers, is the decay of a whole age. Honour hath 
three things in it ; the vantage ground to do good, the approach 
to kings and principal persons, and the raising of a man's own 
fortunes. He that hath the best of these intentions, when he 
aspireth, is an honest man ; and that prince that can discern of 
these intentions in another that aspireth, is a wise prince. 
Generally, let princes and States chnse such ministers as are 
more sensible of duty than of rising, and such as love business 
rather upon conscience than upon bravery ;* and let them dis- 
cern a busy nature from a willing mind. 



' Disgraces. Acts of unkindnesn ; repulses. ' Her disgraces to him were graced 
by her excellence.' — Sir Philip Sidney. 

^ Harmful Hurtful. See page 71. 

' Dependencies. Things or persons under c&mmand, or at disposal. ' The second 
natural division of power, is of such men who have acquired large possessions, 
and consequently, dependencies.' — Swift. 

* Bravery. Ostentation; parade. 

' The bravery of his grief did put me into a towering passion.' — Shakespere. 



ESSAY XXXVII. OF MASQUES^ AND 
TKIUMPHS.^ 

TIIESE things are but toys to come amongst such serious 
obserA'atious ; but yet, since princes will have such things, 
it is better they should be graced with elegancy,' than daubed 
with cost. Dancing to song is a thing of great state and 
pleasure. I understand it that the song be in quire, placed 
aloft, and accompanied with some broken music, and the ditty'' 
fitted to the device. Acting in song, especially in dialogues, 
hath an extreme good grace — I say acting, not dancing (for 
that is a mean and vulgar thing) ; and the voices of the dialogue 
would* be strong and manly (a bass and a tenor, no treble), 
and the ditty bigh and tragical, not nice' or dainty.^ Several 
quires placed one over against another, and taking the voice 
by catches, anthem-wise,' give great pleasure. Turning dances 
into figure is a childish curiosity ; and generally let it be noted, 
that those things which I here set down, are such as do na- 
turally take the sense, and not respect petty wonderments." 
It is true, the alterations of scenes, so it be quietly and without 
noise, are things of great beauty and pleasure ; for they feed 
and relieve the eye before it be full of the same object. Let 



' Masque. A difainatic performance on festive occasions. ' Comus. A masqve 
presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634.' 

' Triumphs. Public shows. 

' What news from Oxford ? Hold those justs and triumphs f — Shakespere. 

' Elegancy. Elegance. 'St. Augustine, out of a kind of elegancy in writing, 
makes some difference.' — Raleigh. 

* Ditty. A poem to he simg. {'Sovf only used in burlesque.) 

' Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute, 
Tempered to the oaten flute.' — Milton. 

* "Would. Should. See page 307. 

* Nice. Minutely aec%irate. 

' The letter was not nice, but full of charge 
Of dear import.' — Shakespere. 
' Dainty. Affectedly fim. 

' Your dainty speakers have the curse. 
To plead bad causes down to worse.' — Prior, 

* "Wise. Ways ; manner or mode. (Seldom now used as a simple word.) 

' This song she sings in most commanding wise.' — Spenser. 
' "Wonderment. Astonishment ; surprise. 

' Kavished with fancy's wonderment.' — Spenser. 



364: Of Masqiies and Triumphs. [Essay xxxvii. 

the scenes abound with light, especially coloured and varied ; 
and let the masquers, or any other that are to come down from 
the scene, have some motions upon the scene itself before their 
coming down ; for it draws the eye strangely, and makes it 
with great pleasure to desire to see that' it cannot perfectly 
discern. Let the songs be loud and cheerful, and not chirpings 
or pulings ;^ let the music likewise be sharj) and loud, and well 
placed. The colours that show best by candle-light are white, 
carnation, and a kind of sea-water green ; and ouches,^ or 
spangs,* as tliey are of no great cost, so they are of most glory." 
As for rich embroidery, it is lost and not discerned. Let the 
suits of the masquers be graceful, and such as become the person 
when the vizards^ are off, not after examples of known attires, 
Turks, soldiers, mariners, and the like. Let anti-masques' not 
be long ; they have been commonly of fools, satyrs, baboons, 
wild men, antics,* beasts, sprites,' witches, ^thiopes," pigmies, 



' Tliat Wiat. See page 64. 

* Puling. Whining. 

' To speak puling, like a beggar at Ilalimass.' — Shakespere. 
" Ouches. Ornaments of gold in which jewels may be set. ' Thou shalt make the 
two stones be set in ouches of gold.' — Exodus xxviii. 11. 

* Spangs. Spangles. 

' A vesture sprinkled here and there, 
With glitt'ring spangs that did like stars appere.' — Spenser 
' Glory. Lustre. ' The moon serene in glory.' — Pope. 

' Vizard — Visor. A mask used to disguise. ' A lie is lilu a vizard, that may 
cover the face, indeed, but can never become it.' — Smxth. 

* Anti-masques. Short masques, or light interludes, played between the parts of 
the principal masques. 

* Antics. Buffoojis. 

' If j'ou should smile, he gi'ows impatient, — 
Fear not, my Lord ; we can contain ourselves. 
Were he the veriest antick in the world.' — Shakespere. 

' Within the hollow crown 
That rounds the mortal temples of a king, 
Keeps Death his court : and there the antick sits 
Scoffing his state.' — Shakespere. 

* Sprites. Spirits. 

' And forth he call'd out of deep darkness drear 

Legions of sprites.' — Spenser. 
' Of these am I who thy protection claim, 
A watchful sprite, and Ariel is my name.' — Pope. 
" Ethiops. Ethiopians ; blacks. 

' Since her time colliers are counted fair. 
And Ethiops of their sweet complexion crack.' — Shakespere. 



Essay xxxvii.] Annotations. S65 

turquets/ nymphs, rustics, Cupids, statues moving, and the like. 
As for angels, it is not comicaP enough to put them in anti- 
masques ; and anything that is hideous, as devils, giants, is, on 
the other side, as unfit ; but chiefly, let the music of them be 
recreative, and with some strange changes. Some sweet odours 
suddenly coming forth, without any drops falling, are, in such 
a company, as there is steam and heat, things of great pleasure 
and refreshment. Double masques, one of men, another of 
ladies, addeth state and variety ; but all is nothiug, except the 
room be kept clear and neat. 

For justs, and tournies,' and barriers, the glories' of them are 
chiefly in the chariots, wherein the challengers make their 
entry, especially if they be drawn with strange beasts, as lions, 
bears, camels, and the like ; or, in the devices of their entrance, 
or in bravery' of their liveries, or in the goodly furniture of 
their horses and armour. But enough of these toys. 



ANNOTATIONS. 

' These things are hut toys . . . .' 

Lord Bacon seems to think some kind of apology necessary 
for treating of matters of this kind in the midst of gi'ave 
treatises. But his taste seems to have lain a good deal this way. 
He is reported to have always shown a great fondness for 
splendour and pageantry, and everything that could catch the 



* Turquets. (Probably) Turks. 

* Comical. Comic. 

' Tourneys. Tournament. 

' Not but the mode of that romantic age, 
The age of tourneys, triumphs, and quaint masques. 
Glared with fantastic pageantry which dimned 
Tlie sober eye of truth, and dazzled e'en 
The sage himself.' — Mason. 

* Glory. Splendour; mag7iijicence. ' Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed 
like one of these.' — Matthew. 

° Bravery. Finery. ' In that day the Lord will take away the bravery of their 
tinkling ornaments about their feet.' — Isaiah iii. 18. 

* A stately ship, with all her bravery on, 
And tackle trim,' — Milton. 

31* 



366 Of Masques and Triumphs. [Essay xxxvii. 

eye and make a display of wealth and magnificence. Tliis may 
be accounted, in such a great philosopher^ ^ouneXhmg frivolous. 
It is worth remarking that the term ' frivolous' is always ap- 
plied (by those who use language Avitli care and correctness) to 
a great interest shown about things that are little to the person 
in question. For, little and great, — trifling or important, — are 
relative teiins. If a grown man or woman were to be occupied 
with a doll, this would be called excessively frivolous ; but no 
one calls a little girl frivolous for playing with a doll. 



ESSAY XXXVIII. OF NATURE IN MEN. 

"IVTATURE is often hidden, sometimes overcome, seldom ex- 
-'-^ tinguished. Force maketh nature more violent in the 
return, doctrine and discourse maketh nature less importune,' 
but custom only doth alter and subdue nature. He that seeketh 
victory over his nature, let him not set himself too great nor 
too small tasks ; for the first will make him dejected by often 
failing, and the second will make him a small proceeder, thouglr 
by often prevailing. And, at the first, let him practise wdth helps, 
as swimmers do with bladders or rushes ; but, after a time, let 
him practise with disadvantages, as dancers do with thick shoes, 
for it breeds great perfection if the practice be harder than the 
use. Where nature is mighty, and therefore the victory hard, 
the degrees had need be, first to stay and arrest nature in time ; 
(like to him that would say over the four-and-twenty letters 
when he was angry) then to go less in quantity ; as if one should, 
in forbearing wine, come from drinking healths to a draught at 
a meal ; and, lastly, to discontinue altogether ; but if a man 



that is the best : — 



Optimus ille animi vindex, Isedentia pectus 
Vincula qui rupit, dedoluitque semel.'" 



a contrary extreme, whereby to set it right ; understanding it 
where the contrary extreme is no vice. Let not a man force a 
habit upon himself with a perpetual continuance, but with some 
intermission, for both the pause reinforceth the new onset ; and 
if a man that is not perfect be ever in practice, he shall as well 
practise his errors as his abilities, and induce one habit of 
both, and there is no means to help this but by seasonable 
intermission. But let not a man trust his victory over his nature 
too far, for nature will lie buried a great time, and yet revive 
upon the occasion or temptation ; like as it was with ^sop's 



^ Importune. Importunate ; troublesome. See page 84. 

' ' He is the best assertor of the soul, who bursts the bonds that gall his breast 
and suffers all, at once.' — Ovid, R. Amoi: 293. 



368 Of Nature in Man. [Essay xxxviii. 

damsel, turned from a cat to a woman, who sat very demurely 
at the board's end till a mouse ran before her ; therefore, let a 
man either avoid the occasion altogether, or put himself often 
to it, that he may be little moved with it. A man's nature is 
best perceived in privateness,' for there is no affectation in 
passion : for that putteth a man out of his precepts, and in a 
new case or experiment, for there custom leaveth him. They 
are happy men whose natures sort" with their vocations,' other- 
wise they may say, ' Multum incola fuit anima mea,'* when 
they converse' in those things they do not affect," In studies, 
whatsoever a man commandeth upon himself, let him set hours 
for it ; but whatsoever is agreeable to his nature, let him take 
no care for any set times ; for his thoughts will fly to it of 
themselves, so as the spaces of other business or studies will 
suflice. A man's nature runs either to herbs or weeds ; there- 
fore let liim seasonably water the one, and destroy the other. 

ANTITHETA ON NATURE IN MEN. 

Pro. Contra. 

' Consuetudo contra naturam, quasi ' Cogitamiis secundum naturam ; lo- 

tyrannis quaedam est; et cito, ac levi quimur secundum pracepta ; sedagimua 

occasione corruit. secundum consuetudinem. 

' Custom, when contrary to nature, ' We think according to our nature; 

is a kind of usurpation over it ; and is we speak according to iustncction ; but 

quickly overthrown on the most trifling we act according to custom.' 
occasion.' 



* Privateness. Privacy. See page 92. ' Sort. Suit. See page 63. 
' Vocation. Calling in life. See page 20. 

* ' My soul has been long a sojourner.' 

* Converse. To have one's way of life in. See Conversation, page 259. ' Let 
your conversation be as becometh the Gospel of Christ. — Phil. i. 27. 

' Octavia is of a holy and still conversation.' — Shakespere. 
« Affect. To like. 

' Dost thou affect her ?.' — Shakespere. 



Essay xxxviii.] Annotations. 369. 



ANNOTATIONS. 

^ A mmi^s nature is hest perceived in privateness j . ... in 
ion : . . . . o/nd in a new case or experiment^ 



To this excellent list of things that show nature, Bacon 
might have added, small things rather than great. ' A straw 
best shows how the wind blows.' The most ordinary and un- 
■ important actions of a man's life will often show more of his 
natural character and his habits, than more important actions 
which ai'e done deliberately^ and sometimes against his natural 
inclinations. 

' A mail's nature runs either to herbs or loeeds : therefoi^e let him 
seasonably water the one and destroy the other.^ 

There are some considerations with regard to human nature, 
unnoticed by Bacon, which are very important, as involving the 
absolute necessity of great watchfulness, candour and diligence, 
in those who would, indeed, desire to ' destroy the weeds.' 
Human nature (as I have observed in a former work) is always 
and everywhere, in the most important points, substantially the 
same ; circumstantially and externally, men's manners and 
conduct are infinitely various in various times and regions. If 
the former were not true, — if it were not for this fundamental 
agreement, — history could furnish no instruction ; if the latter 
were not true, — if there were not these apparent and circum- 
stantial differences, — ^liardly any one could fail to profit by that 
instruction. For, few are so dull as not to learn something 
from the records of past experience in cases precisely similar to 
their own. But as it is, much candour and diligence are called 
for in tracing the analogy between cases which, at the first 
glance, seem very different — in observing the workings of the 
same human nature under all its various disguises, — in recog- 
nizing, as it were, the same plant in dififerent stages of its 
growth, and in all the varieties resulting from climate and culture, 
soil and season. For, so far as any fault or folly is peculiar to 
Bi\j particular age or country, its effects may be expected to pass 
away soon, without spreading very widely ; but so far as it 



370 Of Nature in Men. [Essay xxxviii. 

belongs to human natwre in general, we must expect to find the 
evil effects of it reappearing, again and again, in various forms, 
in all ages, and in various regions. Plants brought from a 
foreign land, and cultivated by human care, may often be, by 
human care, extirpated, or may even perish for want of care ; 
but the indigenous product of the soil, even when seemingly 
eradicated, will again and again be found springing up afresh : 

' Sponte sua qute se tollunt in luminis oras 
Infecunda, quidem, sed Iseta et fortia surgunt, 
Quippe solo natuva subest.' 

If we would be really safe from the danger of committing 
faults of a like character with those which we regard with 
abhorrence in men removed from us either by time or place, 
we must seek that safety in a vigilant suspicion of the human 
heart. We can be secured from the recurrence of similar faults 
in some different shapes, only by the sedulous cultivation of 
that christian spirit, whose implantation is able to purify, to 
renovate, to convert that nature — in short, to ' CREATE THE 
l^EW MAN.' Christian principle only can overthrow the 
' idols of the race' (idola tribus), as Bacon elsewhere calls them ; 
— the errors springing out of man's nature. 



ESSAY XXXIX. OF CUSTOM AND 
EDUCATIOK 

MEX'S tlionghts are iniich according to their inclination ; 
their discourse and speeches according to their learning 
and infused opinions ; but their deeds are after' as' they have 
been accustomed : and, therefore, as Machiavel well notetli 
(though in an evil-favoured instance), there is no trusting to the 
force of nature, nor to the bravery of words, except it be corro- 
borate"" by custom. His instance is, that for the achieving of 
a desperate conspiracy, a man should not rest upon the fierce- 
ness of any man's nature, or his resolute undertakings, but take 
such a one as hath had his hands formerly in blood : but 
Machiavel knew not of a friarjDlement, nor a Ravillac, nor a 
Jaureguy, nor a Baltazar GerJftfi; yet his rule holdeth still, 
that nature, nor the engagement of words, are not* so forcible 
as custom. Only superstition is now so well advanced, that 
men of the first blood are as firm as butchers by occupation ; 
and votary* resolution is made equipollent to custom, even in 
matter of blood. In other things, the predominancy of custom 
is everywhere visible, insomuch as a man would wonder to hear 
men profess, protest, engage, give great words, and then do just 
as they have done before, as if they were dead images and 
engines, moved only by the wheels of custom. We see also the 
reign or tyranny of custom, what it is. The Indians (I mean 
the sect of their wise men) lay themselves quietly uj^on a stack 
of wood, and so sacrifice themselves by fire : nay, the wives 



' After. Accat'ding to. ' Tliat ye seek not after your own heart.' — Nkim. xv. 39. 
'He wlio was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh.' — Gal. iv. 23. 'Deal 
not with lis after our sins.' — Litany. 
^ As. T/iat. See page 23. 

^ Corroborate. Corroborated; strengthened ; made fiTm. 
' His heart is corroborate.' — Shakenpere. 
* Nor — Are not. This double negative is used frequently by old writers, 
' Nor to no Roman else.' — Shakespere. 
'Another sort there be, that will 
Be talking of the fairies still, 
Nor never can they have their fill.' — Drayton, 
^ Votary. Consecrated by a vow. 



372 Of Custom and Education. [Essay xxxix. 

strive to be burned with the corpse of their husbands. Tlie 
lads of Sparta/ of ancient time, were wont to be scourged upon 
the altar of Diana, without so much as queching.' I remember, 
in the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's time of England, an 
Irish rebel condemned, put up a petition to the deputy that he 
might be hanged in a withe," and not in a halter, because it 
had been so used with former rebels. There be monks in 
Russia, for penance, that will sit a M'hole night in a vessel of 
water, till they be engaged with hard ice. 

Many examples may be put of the force of custom, both upon 
mind and body ; therefore, since custom is the principal magis- 
trate of man's life, let men by all means endeavour to obtain good 
customs. Certainly, custom is most perfect when it beginneth 
in young years : this we call education, which is, in eifect, but an 
early custom. So we see in languages, the tone is more pliant to 
all expressions and sounds, theyoints are more supple to all feats 
of activity and motions in 3'oum, than afterwards ; for it is true, 
the late learners cannot so well take up the ply, except it be in 
some minds, that have not suifered themselves to fix, but have 
kept themselves open and prepared to receive continual amend- 
ment, which is exceeding rare : but if the force of custom, 
simple and separate, be great, the force of custom, copulate and 
conjoined, and collegiate, is far greater ; for there example 
teacheth, company comforteth,* emulation quickeneth, glory 
raiseth ; so as in such places the force of custom is in his^ 
exaltation. Certainly, the great multiplication* of virtues upon 
human nature resteth upon societies well ordained and dis- 

' Cic. Tusc^d. Dial. ii. 14. 

" Quecli (properly quicli). To move ; to stir. 

' Underre her feet, there as she sate, 
An huge great lyon layfi, that mote appalle 
An hardy courage ; like eaptived thrall 
"With a strong iron chain and collar bounde — 
ISTot once he could nor move nor quick.' — Spenser. 

* Withs. Ticigs, or bands of twigs. ' If they bind me with seven green withs, 
then shall I be weak.' — Judges xvi. 7. 

* Comfort. To strengthen as an auxiliary; to help. (The meaning of the 
original Latin word, Confmto^ 'Now we exhort you brethren, comfort the 
feeble-minded.' — 1 Tliess. v. 14. 

* His. Its. ' But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased Him, and to every 
seed his own body.' — 1 Cor. xv. 38. 

^ Multiplication upon, ' Increase and multiply upon us thy mercy.' — Collect for 
the ith Sunday after Trinity. 



Essay xxxix.] Annotatio7i8. 373 

ciplined ; for common wealths and good governments do nonrisli 
virtue grown, but do not much mend the seeds : but the miserj'- 
is, that the most efiectual means are now applied to the ends 
least to be desired. 



ANNOTATIONS. 

* Meii's tJbOu</hts are mueh according to ilieir inclinailons : thevr 

discourse and speeches accoi'dhig to their learning and iii- 
fused opinions^ hut tJieir deeds are after as tJiey have Ijeen 
uccustomed.'' 

Tliis remark, like many others, Bacon has condensed in 
Latin into the very brief and pithy apophthegm which I have 
given in the ^Antitheta on Nature in Men.' 'Cogitamus 
secundum naturam ; loquimur secundum praecepta ; sed agimus 
secundum consuetudinom.' Of course, Bacon did not mean his 
words to be taken literally in their utmost extent, and without 
any exception or modification ; as if natural disposition and 
instruction had nothing to do with conduct And, of course, 
he could not mean anytlung so self-contradictory as to say 
that all action is the result of custom : for it is plain that, 
in the firet instance, it must be hy actions that a custom is 
formed. 

But he uses a strong expression, in order to impress it on our 
mind that, for practice, custom is the most essential thing, and 
that it will often overbear both the original disposition, and the 
precepts which have been learnt : that whatever a man may in- 
wardly think, and (with perfect sincerity) say, you cannot fully 
depend on his conduct till you know how he has been accus- 
tomed to act. For, continued action is like a continued stream 
of water, which wears for itself a channel that it will not easily 
be turned from. The bed which the current had gradually 
scooped at first, afterwards confines it. 

Bacon is far from meaning, I conceive, when he says that 

* men speak as they have learned' — to limit himself to the case 
of hisincere professions ; but to point out how much easier it is 
to learn to repeat a lesson correctly, than to bring it into prac- 
tice, when custom is opposed to it. 

32 



374 Of Cudom and Education. [Essay xxxix. 

This is the doctrine of one whom Bacon did not certainly 
regard with any undue veneration — Aristotle ; who, in his 
Ethics, dwells earnestly on the importance of being early ac- 
customed to right practice, with a view to the formation of 
virtuous habits. And he derives the word ' ethics' from a Greek 
word signifying custom ; even as the word 'morality' is derived 
from the corresponding Latin word 'mos.' 

It is to be observed that at the present day, it is common to 
use the words ' custom' and ' habit' as synonymous, and often 
to employ the latter w^here Bacon would have used the former. 
But, strictly speaking, they denote respectively the cause and 
the eifect. Repeated acts constitute the 'custom:' and the 
' habit' is the condition of mind or body thence resulting, For 
instance, a man who has been accustomed to rise at a certain 
hour, will have acquired the hahit of waking and being ready 
to rise as soon as that hour ai-rives. And one who has made it 
his custom to drink drams will have fallen into the halnt of 
craving for that stimulus, and of yielding to that craving ; and 
so of the rest. 

Those are, then, in error who disparage (as Mrs. Hannah 
More does) all practice that does not spring from a formed 
habit. For instance, they censure those who employ children 
as almoners, handing them money or other things to relieve the 
poor with. For, say they, no one can give what is not his own : 
there is no charity unless you part with something that you 
might have kept, and which it is a self-denial to part with. 
The answer is, that if the child does this readily and gladly, he 
has already learnt the virtue of charity ; but if it is a gainful 
self-denial which you urge him to, as a duty, you are creating 
an association of charity with pain. On the contrary, if you 
accustom him to the pleasure of seeing distress relieved, and of 
being the instrument of giving pleasure, and doing good, the 
desire of this gratification will lead him, afterwards, to part 
w^ith something of his own rather than forego it. Tlius it is — to 
use Horace's comparison — that the young hound is trained for 
the chase in the woods, from the time that he barks at the deer- 
skin in the hall.' 

1 ' Venaticiis, ex qtio 

Tempore cervinam pellam latravit ia aula, 

Militat in silvis catulus.' — horace, Book i. ep. 2, 1. 65. 



Essay xxxix.] Annotations. 375 

The precept is very good, to begin witli swimming with corks. 

There is an error somewliat akin to the one I have been com- 
bating, which may be Avorth noticing liere. Declamations are 
current in the present day against the iniquity of giving a bias 
to the minds of young pei-sons, by teaching them our omu inter- 
pretation of the Sacred Vohime, instead of leaving them to in- 
vestigate for themselves ; that is, against endeavouring to place 
them in the same situation "wdth those to whom those very 
Scriptures were written ; instead of leaving them to struggle 
with dithculties which the Scriptures nowhere contemplate or 
provide against. The maintainers of such a principle would do 
well to consider, whether it would not, if consistently pursued, 
prove too much. Do you not, it might be asked, bias the minds 
of children by putting into their hands the Scriptures themselves, 
as the infallible \vord of God ? If you are convinced that they 
are so, you must be sure that they will stand the test of mi- 
prejudiced inquiry. Are you not, at least, bound in fairness to 
teach them at the same time, the systems of ancient Mythology, 
the doctrines of the Koran, and those of modern philosophers, 
that they may freely chuse amongst all ? Let any one w^ho is 
disposed to deride the absurdity of such a proposal, consider 
whether there is any objection to it, which would not equally 
lie against the exclusion of systematic religious instruction, or 
indeed, systematic training in any science or art. It is urged, 
however, that since a man must wish to find the system true in 
which he has been trained., his judgment must be unduly biassed 
by that wish. It would follow from this principle, that no 
physician should be trusted who is not utterly indifferent 
whether his patient recovers or dies, and who is not wholly free 
from any favourable hope from the mode of treatment pursued ; 
since else his mind must be unfairly influenced by his wishes ! 

' The predominancy of custom is everywhere visible j insomuch 

as a man would wonder to hear ')nen jprofess., pfotest, engage, 

give great words, and then do just as they have done before / 

as if they were dead images and engines, moved only hy the 

wheels of custom.'' 

This ' predominancy of custom' is remarkably exemplified in 

the case of soldiers who have long been habituated to obey, as 

if by a mechanical impulse, the word of command. 



376 Of Custom and Education. [Essay xxxix. 

It happened, in the case of a contemplated insurrection in a 
certain part of the British Empire, that the plotters of it sought 
to tamper with the soldiers who were likely to be called out 
against them ; and, for this purpose, frequented the public- 
houses to which the soldiers resorted, and drew them into con- 
versation. Keports of these attempts reached the officers ; who, 
however, found that so little impression was made, that they 
did not think it needful to take any notice of them. On one 
occasion it appeared that a sergeant of a Scotch regiment was 
so far talked OTcr as to feel and express great sympathy with 
the agitators, on account of their alleged grievances, as laid 
before him by the seducer. ' Weel, now, I did na ken that ; 
indeed that seems unco hard ; I can na wonder that ye should 
complain o' that,' &c., &c. 

The other, seeking to follow up his blow, then said, — 'I 
suppose now such honest fellows as you, if you were to be 
called out against us, when we were driven to rise in a good 
cause, would never have the heart to fire on poor fellows who 
were only seeking liberty and justice.' The sergeant replied 
(just as he was reaching down his cap and belt, to return to 
barracks), '■ Fd just na advise ye to try P 

He felt conscious — misled as he had been respecting the 
justice of the. cause, — that, whatever might be his private 
opinions and inward feelings, if the word of command were 
given to 'make ready, present, fire,' he should instinctively 
obey it. 

And this is very much the case with any one who has been 
long drilled in the ranks of 2ijparty. Whatever may be his na- 
tural disposition — whatever may be the judgment his unbiassed 
understanding dictates on any point — whatever he may inwardly 
feel, and may (with perfect sincerity) have said, when you come 
to action, it is likely that the habit of going along with his 
party will prevail. And the more general and indefinite the 
purpose for which the party, or society (or by whatever name it 
may be called) is framed, and the less distinctly specified are its 
objects, the more will its members be, usually, under the con- 
trol and direction of its leaders.' 

I was once conversing with an intelligent and liberal-minded 



• See the ADnotations on the Essay on ' Unity in Rehgion/ and on ' Factions.' 



Essay xxxix.] Annotations. 37T 

man, who was expressing his strong disapprobation of some late 
decisions and proceedings of the leading persons of the Society 
he belonged to, and assuring me that the greater part of the 
subordinates regarded them as wrong and unjustifiable. ' But,' 
said I, ' they w^ill nevertheless, I suppose, comply, and act as 
they are required ?' ' Oh, yes, they mud do that !' 

Of course, there are many various degrees of partisanship, as 
there are also diffei-ent degrees of custom in all other things ; 
and it is not meant that all who are in any degree connected 
with any party must be equally devoted adherents of it. But I 
am speaking of the tendency of party-spirit, and describing a 
party-man so far forth as he is such. And persons of much 
experience in human affairs lay it down accordingly as a maxim, 
that you should be very cautious how you fully trust a party- 
man, however sound his own judgment, and however pure the 
principles on which he acts, when left to himself. A sensible 
and upright man, who keeps himself quite unconnected with 
party, may be calculated on as likely to act on the views wdiich 
you have found him to take on each point. Li some things, 
perhaps, you find him to differ from you ; in others to agree ; 
but when you have learnt what his sentiments are, you know in 
each case what to exjpect. But it is not so with one who is 
connected with, and consequently controlled by, a party. In 
proportion as he is so, he is not fully his own ^master ; and in 
some instances you will probably find him take you quite by 
surprise, by assenting to some course quite at variance with the 
sentiments which you have heard him express — probably with 
perfect sincerity— as his own. When it comes to action, a 
formed habit of following the party, will be likely to prevail 
over everything. At least, ' Fd just na advise \je to try P 

It is important to keep in mind that — as is evident from 
what has been said just above — habits are formed, not at one 
stroke, but gradually and insensibly; so that unless vigilant 
care be employed, a great change may come over the character 
without our being conscious of any. For, as Dr. Johnson has 
well expressed it, ' The diminutive chains of habit are seldom 
heavy enough to be felt, till they are too strong to be broken.' 

And this is often strongly exemplified in the case just 
adverted to— that of party-spirit. It is not often that a man, 
all at once, resolves to join himself to a party ; but he is drawn 
32* 



378 Of Custom and Edumtion. [Essay xxxix. 

in by little and little. Party is like one of those perilous 
whirlpools sometimes met with at sea. When a vessel reaches 
the outer edge of one of them, the current moves so slowly, 
and with so little of a cmwe, that the mariners may be uncon- 
scious of moving in any curve at all, or even of any motion 
whatever. But each circuit of the spiral increases the velocity, 
and gradually increases the curve, and brings the vessel nearer 
to the centre. And perhaps this rapid motion, and the direc- 
tion of it, are for the tirst time perceived, when the force of the 
current has become irresistible. 

Some, no doubt, there were, of those who originally joined 
the Association called ' United Irishmen,' who, entertaining no 
evil designs, were seduced by specious appearances and fair pro- 
fessions, and did not enough consider tliat when once embarked 
on the stream of Party, no one can be sure how far he may 
ultimately be carried. They found themselves, doubtless most 
unexpectedly to many of them, engaged in an attempted revo- 
lution, and partners of men in actual ebellion. 

Ko doubt many did draw back, thoi.gh not witliout difficulty, 
and danger, and shame, when they perceived whither they were 
being hurried ; though it is also, I think, highly probable that 
many were prevented by that difficulty and shame from stopping 
short and turning back in time; and having 'stepped in so 
far,' persevered in a course which, if it had been originally 
proposed to them, they would have shrunk from with horror, 
saying, 'Is thy servant a dog that he should do this great 
thing?' 

' It is true that a man mmj, if he will, withcbaw from, and 
disown, a party which he had tbrmerly belonged to. But this 
is a step which requires no small degree of moral courage. 
And not only are we strongly tempted to shrink from taking 
such a step, but also our dread of doing so is likely rather to 
mislead our reason, than to overpower it. A man will loish to 
think it justifiable to adhere to the party : and this wish is 
likely to bias his judgment, rather than to prevail on him to 
act contrary to his judgment. For, we know how much the 
judgment of men is likely to be Massed, as well as how much 
they are tempted to acquiesce in something against their judg- 
ment, when earnestly pressed by the majority of those who 
• are acting with them, — whom they look up to, — whose appro- 



Essay xxxix,] • Annotations. 379 

bation encourages them, — and wliose censure they cannot but 
dread. 

'Some doctrine, suppose, is promulgated, or measure pro- 
posed, or mode of procedure commenced, wliicli some members 
of a party do not, in their unbiassed judgment, approve. But 
any one of them is disposed, first to wish., then to Jiope, and 
lastly to lelieve, that those are in the right whom he would be 
sorry to think wrong. And again, in any case where his judg- 
ment may still be unchanged, he may feel that it is but a small 
concession he is called on to make, and that there are great 
benefits to set against it ; and that, after all, he is perhaps 
called on merely to acquiesce silently in what he does not quite 
approve ; and, he is loth to incur censure, as lukewarm in the 
good cause, — as presumptuous, — as unfriendly towards those 
who are acting with him. To be ' a breaker tip of the Club' 
{iraipiag dtaXvTTjg) was a reproach, the dread of which, we learu 
from the great historian of Greece, carried much weight with 
it in the transactions of the party-warfare he is describing. 
And we may expect the like in all similar cases. 

' One may sometimes hear a person say in so many words — 
though far oftener, in his conduct — 'It is true I do not alto- 
gether approve of such and such a step ; but it is insisted on as 
essential by those who are acting with us ; and if we were to 
hold out against it, we should lose their co-operation ; which 
would be a most serious evil. There is nothing to be done, 
therefore, but to comply.' ' 

' Certainly ciistom is most perfect when it leginneth in young 
years: this we call education, which is, in effect, hut an early 
custom.'' 

Education may be compared to the grafting of a tree. Every 
gardener knows that the youngeT the wilding-stock is that is to 
be grafted, the easier and the more effectual is the operation, 
because, then, one scion put on just above the root, will become 
the main stem of the tree, and all the branches it puts forth 
will be of the right sort. When, on the other hand, a tree is 
to be grafted at a considerable age (which may be very success- 
fully done), you have to put on twenty or thirty grafts on the 
several branches ; and afterwards you will have to be watching- 



S80 Of Custom and Education. [Essay xxxix. 

from time to time for the wildiiig-slioots wliicli the stock will 
be putting forth, and priming them oif. And even so, one 
whose character is to be reformed at mature age, will find it 
necessary not merely to implant a right principle once for all, 
but also to bestow a distinct attention on the correction of this, 
that, and the other, bad habit. 

It is wonderful that so many persons should confound to- 
gether being accustomed to certain objects^ and accustomed to 
a certain mode of acting. Aristotle, on the contrary, justly 
remarks that opposite habits are formed by means of the same 
things {en rwv avroiv, km Sia t(j)v avrcov) treated in opposite 
ways ; as, for instance, humanity and inhumanity — by being 
accustomed to the view of suffering, with and without the effort 
to relieve it. Of two persons who have been accustomed to 
the sight of much human misery, one, who has been used to 
pass it by Avithout any effort to relieve it, will become careless 
and hardened to such spectacles ; while another, who has been 
in the practice of relieving sufferers, will acquire a strong habit 
of endeavouring to afford relief. These two persons will both 
have been accustomed to the same ohjects, but will have 
acquired opposite ludjits, from being accustomed to act in oppo- 
site ways. 

Suppose that there is in your neighbourhood a loud bell tliat 
is rung very early every moi-ning to call the labourers in some 
great manufactory. At first, and for some time, your rest will 
be broken by it ; but if you accustom yourself to lie still, and 
try to compose yourself, you will become in a few days so ^ised 
to it, that it will not even wake you. But any one who makes 
a point of rising immediately at the call, will become so used 
to it in the opj>osite way, that the sound will never fail to rouse 
him from the deepest sleep. Both will have been accustomed 
to the same bell, but will have formed opposite habits from their 
contrary modes of action. 

And we may see the same thing even in the training of brute 
animals. For instance, of sporting dogs, there are some, such 
as the greyhound, that are trained io pursue hares ; and others, 
which are trained to stand motionless when they come upon a 
hare, even though they see it running before them. Now, both 
kinds are accustomed to hares ; and both have originally the 



Essay xxxix.] Annotations. 381 

game instincts; for all dogs have an instinctive tendency to 
pursue game. But the one kind of dog has always been en- 
couraged to run after a hare, and the other has always been 
chastised if it attempts to do so, and has been trained to stand 
still. 

But it must not be forgotten that education resembles the 
grafting of a tree in this point also, that there must be some 
affinity between the stock and the graft, though a very important 
practical difterence may exist ; for example, between a worthless 
crab, and a fine apple. Even so, the new nature, as it may be 
called, superinduced by education, must always retain some re- 
lation to the original one, though differing in most important 
points. You cannot, by any kind of artificial training, make 
any thing of any one, and obliterate all trace of the natural 
character. Those w-ho hold that this is possible, and attempt to 
effect it, resemble Virgil who (whether in ignorance or, as some 
think, by way of ' poetical licence') talks of grafting an oak on 
an elm : ' glandesque sues fregere sub ulmis.' 

One of Doctor Johnson's paradoxes, more popular in his time 
than now, but far from being now exploded, was, that a given 
amount of ability may be turned in any direction, ' even aS|p 
man may walk this way or that.' And so he can ; because 
walking is the action for which the legs are fitted ; but though 
he may use his eyes for looking at this object or that, he cannot 
hear with his eyes, or see with his ears.* And the eyes and 
ears are not more different than, for instance, the poetical faculty, 
and the mathematical. 'Oh, but if Milton had turned his 
mind to mathematics : and if Newton had turned his mind to 
poetry, the fonner might have been the great mathematician, 
and the latter the great poet.' This is open to the proverbial 
reply, ' If my aunt had been a man, she would have been my 
uncle.' For,' the supposition implied in these ifs is, that Milton 
and Newton should have been quite different characters from 
what they were. 



382 Of Custom and Education. [Essay xxxix, 

' . . , . Minds that have not suffered themselves to fix^ lut ham 
lce])t themselves open and prepared to receive continual 
amendjinent^ lohich is exceeding rare.' 

And as admirable as it is rare. Such minds may indeed 
print their opinions, but do not stereotype them. Nor does the 
self-distrust, the perpetual care, the diligent watchfulness, the 
openness to conviction, the exercise of which is implied in 
Bacon's description, necessarily involve a state of painful and 
unceasing douljt. For, in proportion as a man is watchfully 
and prayerfully on his guard against the unseen current of 
passions and prejudices, which is ever tending to drive him out 
of the right course, in the same degree he will have reason for 
cherishing an humble hope that He, the Spirit of Truth, is, and 
will be, with him, to enlighten his understanding, to guide his 
conduct, and to lead him onwards to that state in which Faith 
shall be succeeded by sight, and hope by enjoyment. 



' The force of custom, copulate and conjoined.^ and collegiate., 
is far greater.'' 

For this reason it is, that what is said or done by very in- 
ferior persons, is the best sign of what is commonly said or 
done in the place and time in which they live. A man of 
resolute character, fnd of an original turn of thought, being 
more likely to resist this force of ' copulate and collegiate cus- 
tom,' does not furnish so good a sign of what are the prevailing 
opinions and customs. Hence the proverb : 

' A straw best shows 
How the wind blows.' 

A bar of heavy metal would not be perceptibly influenced by 
the wind. 

I wish I could feel justified in concluding this head without 
saying anything of Bacon's own character ; — witliout holding 
him up as himself a lamentable example of practice at variance 
"with good sentiments, and sound judgment, and right precepts. 
He thought well, and he spoke well ; but he had accustomed 
himself to act very far from well. And justice requires that 



Essay xxxix.] Annotations. 38S 

lie should be held up as a warning beacon to teach all men an 
important lesson ; to afford them a sad proof that no intellec- 
tual power — no extent of learning, — not even the most pure and 
exalted moral sentiments, confined to theory, will supply the 
want of a diligent and watchful conformity in practice to chris- 
tian principle. All the attempts that have been made to vindi- 
cate or palliate Bacon's moral conduct, tend only to lower, and 
to lower very much, the standard of virtue. He appears but 
too plainly to have been worldly, ambitious, covetous,, base, 
selfish, and unscrupulous.' And it is remarkable that the 
Mammon which he served proved but a faithless master in the 
end. He reached the highest pinnacle, indeed, to which his 
ambition had aimed ; but he died impoverished, degraded, des- 
pised, and broken-hearted. His example, therefore, is far from 
being at all seductive. 

But let no one, thereupon, undervalue or neglect the lessons 
of wisdom wdiich his writings may supply, and which we may, 
through divine grace, turn to better account than he did him- 
self. It woidd be absurd to infer, that because Bacon was a 
great philosopher, and far from a good man, therefore you will 
be the better man for keeping clear of his philosophy. His 
intellectual superiority was no more the cause of his moral 
failures, than Solomon's wisdom was of his. You may be as 
faulty a character as eitlier of them Avas, without possessing a 
particle of their wisdom, and without seeking to gain instruction 
from it. Tlie intellectual light which they enjoyed, did not, 
indeed, keep them in the right path ; but you wull not be the 
more likely to walk in it, if you quench any light that is 
afforded you. 

' Tins censure of Bacon has actually been complained of as undeserved; not 
on the ground that his conduct was any better than it is but too well known 
to have been, but on the ground that his writings contain excellent views of 
Gospel-truth ! 

This is exactly the doctrine of the ancient Gnostics ; who held that their (so- 
called) knowledge [Gnosis] of the Gospel would save them, though leading a 
vicious life. 

But when instances of such teaching in our own days are adduced (as unhappily 
may be done to a great extent), some persons — including some who are themselves 
of blameless life — resolutely shiit their ears to evidence, and will not be brought 
to perceive, or at least to acknowledge, that any such thing as Gnosticism exists 
among us, or that we are in danger of antinomian doctrine. 

So strong is the force of Party ! 



384 Of Custom and Education. [Essay xxxix. 

Tlie Canaanites of old, we should remember, dwelt in 'a 
good land, flowing with milk and honey,' though they wor- 
shipped not the true God, but served abominable demons with 
sacrifices of the produce of their soil, and even with the blood 
of their children. But the Israelites were invited to go in, and 
take possession of ' well-stored houses that they builded not, 
and wells which they digged not ;' and they ' took the labours 
of the people in possession ;' only, they were warned to beware 
lest, in their prosperity and wealth, they should ' forget the 
Lord their God,' and to offer to Him the first fruits of their 
land. 

Neglect not, then, any of the advantages of intellectual cul- 
tivation, which God's providence has placed within your reach; 
nor ' think scorn of that pleasant land,' and prefer wandering 
by choice in the barren wilderness of ignorance ; but let the 
intellect which God has endowed you with be cultivated as a 
servant to Ilim, and then it will be, not a master, but a useful 
servant, to you. 



ESSAY XL. OF FORTUNE. 

IT cannot be denied but outward accidents conduce much to 
fortune ; favour, opportunity, death of otliers, occasion fitting 
virtue : but chiefly the mould of a man's fortune is in his own 
hands. ' Faber quisque fortunae suae,' saith the poet :' and the 
most frequent of external causes is, that the folly of one man is 
the fortune of another ; for no man prospers so suddenly as by 
other's errors : ' serpens nisi serpentem comederit non fit draco." 
Overt and apparent^ virtues bring forth praise : but there be 
secret and hidden virtues that bring forth fortune ; certain 
deliveries of a man's self, which have no name. The Spanish 
name, ' disemboltura,'* partly expresseth them, when there be 
not stonds^ and restiveness in a man's nature, but that the 
wheels of his mind keep way" with the wheels of his fortune ; 
for so Livy (after he had described Cato Major in these words, 
' in illo viro, tantum robur corporis et animi fuit, ut quocunque 
loco natus esset, fortunam, sibi facturus videretur')' falleth upon 
that he had, ' versatile ingenium." Therefore, if a man look 
sharply and attentively, he shall see fortune ; for though she be 
blind, yet she is not invisible. The way of fortune is like the 
milken* way in the sky; which is a meeting, or knot, of a 



* 'Everyman the artificer of his own fortune.' — Appius Claudius; hut attri- 
buted by Bacon elsewhere {Advancement of Learning) to Plautus. 

' 'Unless the serpent devours the serpent, it does not become a dragon.' 
^ Apparent. Evident; known; visible. 

' As well the fear of harm, as harm apparent, 
In my mind ought to be prevented.' — Skakespere. 
' Tlie outward and appare7it sanctity should flow from purity of heart.' 

— After bury. 

* Desenvoltura. Graceful ease. 

* Stonds. Stops. ' The removal of the stonds and impediments of the mind, 
that often clears the passage and current to a man's fortune.' — Bacon's Letter to 
Sir Henry Temple. 

^ Way. Time. The time in which a certain space can be passed through 
or over. 

'A mile-toan/.' — Chancer. 

' ' In that man there was so much strength of body and of mind, that it seems 
that in whatever place he had been, he would have made fortune his own.' 

* ' A versatile mind.' 

* Milken. Milky. ' The remedies are to be proposed from a constant course 
of the Milken diet.' — Temple. 

33 BB 



3S6 Of Fortune. [Essay xl. 



getlicr : so are there a number of little and scarce discerned 
virtues, or rather faculties and customs, that make men fortunate : 
the Italians note some of them, such as a man would little 
think. When they speak of one that cannot do amiss, they 
•will throw in into his other conditions, that he hath ' Poco di 
matto ;" and, certainly, there be not two more fortunate pro- 
perties than to have a little of the fool, and not too much of 
the honest : therefore extreme lovers of their country, or masters, 
were never fortunate neither can they be: for when a man 
placeth his thoughts without himself, he goeth not his own 
way, A hasty fortune maketh an enterpriser" and remover' 
(the French hath it better, ' entreprenant,' or ' remnant'), but 
the exercised* fortune maketh the able man. Fortune is to be 
honoured and respected, and' it be but for her daughters. Con- 
science and Keputation ; for those two felicity breedeth ; the 
first within a man's self, the latter in others towards him. All 
wise men, to decline* the envy of their own virtues, use to 
ascribe them to Providence and Fortune ; for so they may the 
better assume them : and besides, it is greatness in a man to be 
the care of the higher powei-s. So Csesar said to the pilot in 
the tempest, ' Csesarem portes, «t fortunam ejus.'^ So Sylla 
chose the name of ' felix,' and not of ' magnus :'* and it hath 
been noted, that those who ascribe openly too much to their 
own wisdom and policy, end unfortunate. It is written, that 
Timotheus, the Athenian, after he had, in the account he gave 
to the State of his government, often interlaced this speech, 
' And in this fortune had no part,' never prospered in anything 



^ ' A little of the fool.' 

^ Enterpriser. An adventurer ; a bold projector. 

' Wit makes an enterpriser, sense a man.' — Young. 
' Remover. Agitator. 

* Exercised. Made familiar by nse. ' A heart exercised with covetous prac- 
'tices.'— 2 Fet. ii. 14. 

^ And. If. 

' Nay, and I suffer this, I may go craze.' — Beaumont and Fletcher. 

* Decline. To avoid. 

' Since the Muses do invoke my power, 
I shall no more decline the sacred bower 
Where Gloriana, the great mistress, lies.' — Sir P. Sidney. 
■^ ' You carry Cajsar and his fortunes.' — Plut. Vit. Ccesar. 38. 

* 'Fortunate/ (and not of) 'great.' Plut. Syll. 34. 



Essay xL] Annotations. 387 

lie undertook afterward. Certainly tliere be wliose fortunes are 
like Homer's verses, that have a slide' and an easiness more 
than the verses of other poets ; as Plutarch saith of Timoleon's* 
fortune, in re.spect of that of Agesilaus, or Epaminondas ; and 
tliat this should be, no doubt it is much in a man's self. 

ANTITHETA ON FORTUNE. 
Pna Contra. 

* Virtutes apertae laudes pariuat; oc- 'Stultitia unius, fortima alterius. 

cultse fortunas. ' The folly of one is tJie good fwtune 

' Vvrtnes that are openly seen obtain of miotlier' 
praine ; hut what is tailed luck is the 
result of utiperceived virtues.' 

'Fortuna veluti galaxia; hoc est, 
nodus quarundam obscurarum virtutum, 
sine nomina 

'Fortune is like a galaxy; that is to 
say, a vollectioii of certain VMseen and 
nameless endowments.' 



ANNOTATIONS, 

* So a/re tlmv a number of little and scarce disccimed faculties or 
customs., that 7nake men fortwuate^ 

It is common to hear the lower ordei-s speak of Zi^cA;, either as 
their mode of expressing what Bacon here calls ' small faculties 
and customs,' or, as attributing to fortune what is a kind of 
indescribable and impei'ceptible skill. You may hear them 
speak of a w^oman who has good luck in her butter-making or 
in bread-making ; of a gardener who is lucky or who is unlucky 
in grafting, or in raising melons, &c. 

*■ When they {the Italians) speak of one that cannot do amiss, 
they will throw into his other mnditions., that he hath ' Poco 
di matto' [a little of the fool].'' 

This is in accordance with the proverb, 'Fortune favours 
fools ;' and it would have been well if Bacon had said some- 



* Slide. Fluency. ' Often he had used to be an actor in tragedies, where he 
had learned, besides a slidin^mss of language, acquaintance with my passions.'— 
Sidney. * Vit Timol 36. 



388 Of Fan'tune. [Essay xl. 

thing more of it. Fortune is said to favour fools, because tbey 
trust all to fortune. When a fool escapes any danger, or 
succeeds in any undertaking, it is said thai fortune favours him; 
while a wise man is considered to prosper by his own prudence 
and foresight. For instance, if a fool who does not bar his 
door, escapes being robbed, it is ascribed to his luck ; but the 
prudent man, having taken precautions, is not called fortunate. 
But a wise man is, in fact, more likely to meet with good 
fortune than a foolish one, because he puts himself in the way 
of it. If he is sending off a ship, he has a better chance of 
obtaining a favourable wind, because he chuses the place and 
season in which such winds prevail as will be favourable to him. 
If the fool's ship arrives safely, it is by good luck alone ; while 
both must be in some degree indebted to fortune for success.'' 

One way in whicli fools succeed where wise men fail is, that 
through ignorance of the danger, they sometimes go coolly 
about some hazardous business. Hence the proverb that ' The 
fairies take care of children, drunken men, and idiots.' 

A surgeon was once called in to bleed an apoplectic patient. 
He called the physician aside, and explained to him that in this 
particular subject the artery lay so unusually (xver the vein, that 
there was imminent risk of pricking it. ' Well, but he must 
be bled at all hazards ; for he is sure to die without.' ' I am so 
nervous,' said the surgeon, ' that my hand would be unsteady. 
But I know of a barber hard by who is accustomed to bleed ; 
and as he is ignorant of anatomy, he will go to work coolly.' 
The barber was summoned, and performed the operation readily 
and safely. When it was over, the surgeon showed him some 
anatomical plates, and explained to him that he had missed 
the artery only by a hair's breadth. He never ventured to 
bleed again. 

One sometimes meets with an ' ill-used man ;' a man with 
whom everything goes wrong; who is always thinking how 
happy he should be to exchange his present wretched situation 
for such and such another ; and when he has obtained it, find- 
ing that he is far worse off than before, and seeking a remove ; 
and as soon as he has obtained that, discovering that his last 



* See Froverbs and Precepts for Copy-Pieces. 



Essay xl.] Annotations. 389 

situation was just the tiling for him, and was beginning to open 
to him a prospect of unbroken happiness, far beyond his present 
state, &c. To him a verse of Shakespere well applies : — • 



thoughts of men accurst ! 



Past, and to come, seem best, things present, worst' 

One is reminded of a man travelling in the African desert, sur- 
rounded by mirage, with a (seeming) lake behind him, and a 
lake before him, which, when he has reached, he finds to be 
still the same barren g,nd scorching sand, A friend aptly 
remarked, ' This man's happiness has no present tense.' 
35* 



ESSAY XLI. OF USURY.' 

1%/rAlSrY have made wittj invectives against usiiiy. Tliey 
-^-^ say, that it is pity'' the devil should have God's part, which, 
is the tithe: that the usurer is the greatest Sabbath-breaker, 
because his plough goeth every Sunday ; that the usurer is the 
drone that Yirgil speaketh of: 

' Ignavum fucos peeus a pra?sepibus arcent ;" 

that the usurer breaketh the first law that was made for man- 
kind after the fall, which w^as, ' In sudore vultus tui comedes 
panera tuam,'* not ' In sudore vultus alieni •" that usurers 
should have orange-tawny bonnets, because they do judaize ; 
that it is against nature for money to beget money ; and the 
like. I say this only, that usury is a ' concessum propter 
duritiem cordis :'^ for since there must be borrowing and lend- 
ing, and men are so hard of heart as' they will not lend freely, 
usury must be permitted. Some others have made suspicious 
and cunning propositions of banks, discovery of men's estates, 
and other inventions ; but few have spoken of usury usefully. 
It is good to set before us the incommodities* and commodities* 
of usmy, that the good may be either weighed out or culled 



' Usury. Interest on money (not, as now, unlawful interest). ' Tbou oughtest, 
therefore, to have put my money to the exchangers, and then, at my conodng, I 
should have received mine own with usury.' — 3Iatt. xxv. 27. ' Our angles are like 
money put to usury ; they may still tlirive, though we' sit still, and do nothing.' — 
Isaak Walton. 

* It is pity. It is a pity. 

' That he is mad, 'tis true; 'tis true, 'tis pity ; 
And pity 'tis, 'tis true.' — Shakespere. 
' ' They drive from the hive the lazy swarm of drones.' — Geory. iv. 168. 

* 'In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.' — Gen. iii. 19. 

* ' In the sweat of another's face. 

^ ' A concession on account of hardness of heart.' — See Matt. xix. 8. 
"> As. Tfiat. See page 23. 

* Incommodity. Inconvenience ; disadvantage. ' Tlie uncouth incommolity of 
my solitary life.' — Bishop Hall. ' What incotnmodity have you conceived to be in 
the common law.' — Spenser. 

' Commodities. Advantages. 

' I will turn diseases to commodities' — Shakespere. 



Essay xli.] Of Usury. 391 

out ; and warilj to pi-ovide, that, while we make forth to that 
which is better, we meet not with that which is worse. 

The discommodities' of usury are, first, that it makes feAver 
merchants : for were it not for this lazy trade of usury, money 
would not lie still, but it would in great part be employed upon 
merchandising,^ which is the vena porta? of wealth in a State : the 
second, that it makes poor merchants ; for as a farmer cannot 
husband his ground so well if he sit at a great rent, so the 
merchant cannot di-ive his trade so well if he sit at great usury : 
the third is incident to the other two, and that is, the decay of 
customs of kings, or estates,* which ebb or flow with merchan- 
dising : the fourth, that it bringeth the treasure of a realm or 
State into a few hands ; for the usurer being at certainties, and 
the^other at uncertainties, at the end of the game most of the 
money will be in the box, and ever a State flourisheth when, 
wealth is more equally spread : the fifth, that it beats down the 
price of land ; for the employment of money is chiefly either 
merchandising, or purchasing ; and usury waylays both ; the 
sixth, that it doth dull and damp all industries, improvements, 
and new inventions, wherein money would be stirring, if it were 
not for this slug : the last, that it is the canker and ruin of 
many men's estates, which in process of time breeds a public 
poverty. 

On the other side, the commodities of usury are, first, that 
howsoever^ usury in some respects hindereth merchandising, yet 
in some other it advanceth it, for it is certain that the greatest 
part of trade is driven by young merchants uj)on borrowing at 
interest; so afi* if the usurer either call in or keep back his 
money, there will ensue presently a great stand of trade : the 
second is, that, were it not for this easy borrowing upon interest, 
men's necessities would draw upon them a most sudden undoing,^ 
in that* they would be forced to sell their means (be it lands 



' Discommodities. Inconvenieticies. See page 331. 

^ Merchandizing. Trading. ' The Pheuicians, of whose exceeding merchandiz- 
ing we read so much in ancient histories, were Canaanites, whose very name sig- 
nifies merchants.' — Brerewood. 

^ The great vein. ''Estates. Statex. See page 119. 

^ Howsoever. Although. See page 2. ' As. That. See page 23. 

' Undoing. See page 2'7'7. 

^ In that. Inasmuch as. 'Things are preached not in that they are taught, but 
in that they are published' — Hooker. 



392 Of TJsurxj. [Essay xli. 

or goods) far under foot,' and so, whereas usury dotli but gnaw 
upon tliem, bad markets would swallow them quite up. As for 
mortgaging, or pawning, it will little mend the matter ; for 
either men will not take pawns'* without use,' or if they do, they 
will look precisely for the forfeiture. I remember a cruel 
monied man in the country, that would say, ' The devil take 
this usury, it keeps us from forfeitures of mortgages and bonds.' 
Tlie third and last is, that it is a vanity to conceive that there 
would be ordinary borrowing without profit, and it is impossible 
to conceive the number of inconveniencies that will ensue, if 
borrowing be cramped : therefore, to speak of the abolishing of 
usury is idle ; all States have ever had it in one kind or rate or 
other — so as that opinion must be sent to Utopia. 

To speak now of the reformation and reglement* of usury, 
how the discommodities of it may be best avoided, and the 
commodities retained. It appears by the balance of commo- 
dities and discommodities of usury, two things are to be recon- 
ciled ; the one that the tooth of usury be grinded, that it bite 
not too much ; the other that there be left open a means to 
invite monied men to lend to the merchants, for the continuing 
and quickening' of trade. Tliis cannot be done, except you 
introduce two several sorts of usury, a less and a greater ; for 
if you reduce usury to one low rate, it will ease the common 
borrower, but the merchant will be to seek for money ; and it 
is to be noted, that the trade of merchandise being the most 
lucrative, may bear usury at a good rate — other contracts 
not so. 

To serve both intentions,* the way would be briefly thus : — 
that there be two rates of usury ; the one free and general for 
all, the other under licence only to certain persons, and in 
certain places of merchandising. First, therefore, let usury in 
general be reduced to five in the hundred, and let that rate be 

^ Under foot. Too low. ' What a stupidness is it, then, that we should deject 
ourselves to such a sluggish, and underfoot philosophy.' — Milton. 

' Pawns. A fledge. 

' Her oath for love, her honour's ^rtiew.' — Shakexpere. 

* Use. Interest. * Reglement. Regulation. 

° Quicken. To give life to. ' You hath He quickened, who were dead in tres- 
passes and sins.' — Bphex. ii. 1. 

'Intention. Object. ' The principal ini^'n^iwi (in chronic distempers) is to re- 
6tore the tone of the solid parts.' — Arbuthnot. 



Essay xli.] Of Usury. 393 

proclaimed to be free and current, and let the State slnit itself 
out to take any penalty for the same. This will preserve bor- 
rowing from any general stop or dryness — this will ease infinite 
borrowers in the country — this will, in good part, raise the price 
of land, because land purchased at sixteen years' purchase will 
yield six in the hundred, and somewhat more, whereas this rate 
of interest yields but five — this, by like reason, will encourage 
and edge industrious and profitable improvements, because many 
will rather venture in tliat kind, than take five in the hundred, 
especially having been used to greater profit. Secondly, let 
there be certain persons licenced to lend to known merchants 
upon usury, at a high rate, and let it be with the cautions fol- 
lowing. Let the rate be, even with the merchant himself, 
somewhat more easy tlian that he used formerly to pay ; for by 
that means all borrowers shall have some ease by this reforma- 
tion, be he merchant or whosoever' — let it be no bank, or com- 
mon stock, but every man be master of his owm money ; not 
that I altogether mislike' banks, but they will hardly be brooked, 
in regard^ of certain suspicions. Let the State be answered* 
some small matter for the licence, and the rest left to the 
lender; for if the abatement be but small, it will no whit' 
discourage the lender ; for he, for example, that took before ten 
or nine in the hundred, will sooner descend to eight in the 
hundred, than give over this trade of usury, and go from certain 
gains to gains of hazard. Let these licenced lenders be in 
number indefinite, but restrained to certain principal cities and 
towns of merchandising ; for then they will be hardly able to 
colour" other men's monies in the country, so as the licence of 



* Whosoever. Whoever. ' Whosoever should give the blow, the murder would 
be his. We are guilty of all the evil we might have hindered.' — Bishop Hall. 

" Mislike. Dislike. 

' And Israel, whom I lov'd so dear, 
Misliked me for his choice.' — Milton. 
' In regard. On account. See page 286. 

* Answer. To pay. 

' Who studies day and night 
To answer ail the debts he owes to you.' — Shakespere. 
' Whit. In the least; in the s^nallest degree. ' I was not a whit behind the very 
chiefest apostles.' — 2 Cor. xi. 5. 

' We love, and are no whit regarded.' — Sidney. 
' Colour. To pass for their own. ' To colour a stranger's goods is, when a 
freeman allows a foreigner to enter goods at the Custom-house in his name.' — 
J'hillijps. 



394 Of Usury. [Essay xli. 

nine will not suck away tlie current rate of five ; for no man 
will lend his monies far off, nor put them into unknown hands. 
If it be objected that this doth in any sort authorise usury, 
which before was in some places but permissive, the answer is, 
that it is better to mitigate usury by declaration, than to suffer 
it to rage by connivance. 



ANNOTATIONS. 

It is wonderful how late right notions on this subject were 
introduced ; and not even now have they been universally 
adopted. I have already remarked, in the notes to the Essay 
on ' Seditions and Tumults,' that the error of over-governing 
always prevails in the earlier stages of civilization (even as the 
young are more liable to it than the experienced), and that 
Bacon shared in this error is evident from his advocating 
sumptuary laws — the regulating of prices — the legislating against 
engrossers — prohibiting the laying down of land in pasture, &c. 
All these puerilities are to be found in the earlier laws of all 
countries. / In this Essay on ' Usury,' he does not go the whole 
length of the prejudices existing in his time, though he partakes 
of them in a great degree. In his day, and long before, there 
were many who held it absolutely sinful to receive any interest 
for money, on the ground of the prohibition of it to the 
Israelites in their dealings with each other ; though the Mosaic 
law itself proves the contrary, since it allows lending at interest 
to a stranger ; and certainly the Israelites were not permitted 
to oppress and defraud strangers. 

''Since there must he borrowing and lending^ and inen are so 
hard of heart as they wiM not lend freely ' 

It seems strange that a man of Bacon's acuteness should not 
have perceived — but it is far more strange that legislators in 
the nineteenth century should not have perceived — that there 
is no essential difference between the use of any other kind of 
property, and money, which represents, and is equivalent to, 



Essay xli.] Annotations. 395 

any and all kinds. It never occurred to Bacon, seemingly, that 
no man is called liard-hearted for not letting liis land or liis 
house rent-free, or for requiring to be paid for the use of his 
horse, or his ship, or any other kind of property. 

If I build a mill or a ship, and let it to a manufacturer or 
merchant, every one would allow that this is a very fair way of 
investing capital ; quite as fair, and much wiser, than if, being 
ignorant of manufactures and trade, I were to set up for a 
mauutacturer or merchant. Now if, instead of this, I lend a 
merchant money to buy or build a ship for himself, or advance 
money to the manufacturer to erect his buildings and machinery, 
he will probably suit himself better than if I had taken this on 
myself, without his experience. 

No doubt, advantage is often taken of a man's extreme 
necessity, to demand high interest, and exact payment with 
rigour. But it is equally true that advantage is taken, in some 
crowded town, of a man's extreme need of a night's lodging. 
Again, it is but too well known, that where there is an exces- 
sive competition for land, as almost the sole mode of obtaining 
a subsistence, it is likely that an exorbitant rent will be asked, 
and that this will be exacted with unbending severity. But who 
would thereupon propose that the letting of land should be pro- 
hibited, or that a maximum of rent should be fixed by law ? For, 
legislative interposition in dealings between man and man, except 
for the prevention of fraud, generally increases the evil it seeks 
to remedy. A prohibition of interest, or — which is only a minor 
degree of the same error — a prohibition of any beyond a certain 
fixed rate of interest, has an effect similar to that of a like in- 
terference between the buyers and sellers of any other com- 
modity. If, for examj^le, in a time of scarcity it were enacted, 
on the ground that cheap food is desirable, that bread and meat 
should not l)e sold beyond such and such a price, the result 
would be that every one would be driven — unless he would 
submit to be starved — ^to evade the law ; and he would have to 
pay for his food vwre than he otherwise would, to cover (1) the 
cost of the contrivances for the evasion of the law, and (2) a 
compensation to the seller for the risk, and also for the dis- 
credit, of that evasion. Even so, a man who is in want of 
money, and can find no one to lend it him at a legal interest, is 
either driven (as Bacon himself remarks), to sell his property 



396 Of Usury. [Essay xli. 

at a ruinous loss, or else be borrows of some Jew, wbo contrives 
to evade tbe law ; and be has to pay for tbat evasion. /Suppose, 
for instance, be could borrow (if tbere were no usury-laws) at 
eigbt per cent., be will bave to pay, perbaps, virtually twelve 
per cent.,' because (1) be bas to resort to a man wbo incurs 
disgrace by bis trade, and wbo will require a greater profit to 
compensate for tbe discredit ; and (2) be will bave to receive 
part of bis loan in goods wbicb be does not want, at an exorbi- 
tant price, or in some otber way to receive less, really, tban be 
does nominally. 



ESSAY XLIL OF YOUTH AND AGE. 

A MAN tliat is young in years may be old in hours, if lie 
have lost no time ; but that happeneth rarely. Generally, 
youth is like the first cogitations, not so wise as the second, for 
there is a youth in thoughts as well as in ages ; and yet the 
invention of young men is more lively than that of old, and imagi- 
nations sti'eam into their minds better, and, as it were, more 
divinely. Natures that have much heat, and great and violent 
desires and pertui'bations, are not ripe for action till they have 
passed the meridian of their years ; as it was with Julius Csesar 
and Septimius Severus, of the latter of whom it is said, ' Juven- 
tutem egit, erroribus, imo furoribus plenam :" and yet he was 
the ablest emperor almost of all the list ; but reposed'^ natures 
may do well in youth, as it is seen in Augustus Caesar, Cosmus 
Duke of Florence, Gaston De Fois, and others. On the other 
side, heat and vivacity in age is an excellent composition^ for 
business. Young men are fitter to invent than to judge, fitter 
for execution than for counsel, and fitter for new projects than 
for settled business ; for the experience of age, in things that 
fall within the compass of it, directeth them, but in new things 
abuseth^ them. The errors of young men are the ruin of busi- 
ness, but the errors of aged men amount but to this — ^that more 
might have been done, or sooner. Young men, in the conduct 
and manage^ of actions, embrace more than they can hold ; stir 
more than they can quiet ; fly to the end, without consideration 
of the means and degrees ; pursue some few principles which 
they have chanced upon, absurdly ; care not* to innovate, which 



' ' His youth was not only full of errors, but of frantic passions.' — Spartian, 
Vit. Sev. 

^ Reposed. Calm. ' With wondrous reposedness of mind, and gentle words. 
Reputation answered.' — Translation of Boccalini 1626. 

' Composition. Temperament. See page 306. 

* Abuse. To deceive ; to lead astray. 

' Nor be with all those tempting words abused.' — Pope. 

* Manage. Management. 

' The manage of my state.' — Shakespere. 

* Care not. Are not cautious. 

34 



398 Of Youth and Age. [Essay xlil. 

draws unknown inconveniences ; use extreme remedies at first ; 
and that, wliicli doubleth all errors, will not acknowledge or 
retract them, like an unready horse that will neither stop nor 
turn. Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure 
too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to 
the full period,' but content themselves with the mediocrity of 
success. Certainly it is good to compound employments of 
both ; for that will be good for the present, because the virtues 
of either age may correct the defects of both ; and good for 
succession, that young men may be learners, while men in age 
are actors ; and, lastly, good for extern^ accidents, because 
authority followeth old men, and favour and popularity youth ; 
but, for the moral part, perhaps, youth will have the pre- 
eminence, as age hath for the politic. A certain rabbin, upon 
the text, '■ Your young men shall see visions, and your old men 
shall dream dreams,'^ inferreth that young men are admitted 
nearer to God than old, because vision is a clearer revelation 
than a dream ; and, certainly, the more a man drinketh of the 
world, the more it intoxicateth ; and age doth profit' rather in 
the powers of understanding, than in the virtues of the M'ill and 
affections. There be some have an over-early ripeness in their 
years, which fadetli betimes : these are, first, such as have brittle 
w^its, the edge whereof is soon turned ; such as was Hermogenes 
the rhetorician, whose books are exceeding subtle, who after- 
wards waxed^ st\ij3id : a second sort is of those that have some 
natural disposition's,, which have better grace in youth than in 
age, such as is a fiuent and luxurious speech, which becomes 
youth well, but not age ; so Tully saitli of Hortensius, ' Idem 



'Period. Completion; perfection. 'In light-conserving stones, the light will 
appear greater or lesser, until they come to their utmost period.' — Digby. 
^ Extern, External. 

' When my outward action doth demonstrate 
The native act and figure of my heart, 
In compliment extern, 'tis not long after. 
But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve, 
For daws to peck at.' — Skakespere. 
^ Joel ii. 28. 

* Profit To improve. ' Tliat thy profiting may appear unto all men.' — 1 7lm. 
iv. 15. ' It is a great means of profiting yourself to copy diligently excellent 
designs.' — Drgden. 

* Waxed To grow ; to become. ' Paul and Barnabas waxed bold.' — Acts xiii. 46. 



Essay xlii.] Annotations. 399 

manabet, neqiie idem clecebat :'^ tlie third is of sncli as take 
too high a strain at the first, and are magnanimous more than 
tract of years^ can uphold ; as was Scipio Africanus, of whom 
Livy saith in effect, ' Ultima primis cedebant." 

ANTITIIETA ON YOUTH AND AGE. 

Pro. Contra. 

* * * ' Juventus poenitentise campus. 

'Senes eibi sapiunt magis, aliis et 'Youth is the field for the seeds of 

reipublicte minus. repentence.' 



'■ Ingenitns est juvenibus senilis auc- 



' Old men have more wisdom for 
themselves, and less for others, and for 
the miblic ' toritatis contemptus ; ut quisque suo 

periculo sapiat. 
' Si conspici daretur, magis deformat ' A contempt for the judgments of age 

animos, quam corpora, senectus. is implanted in youth, in wder that every 

' If the mind could he an object of one may be sentenced to learn wisdom at 
sight, it would be seen that old age de- his oivn risk.' 
forms it more than the body.' 

Tempus, ad qufe consilia non advo- 
' Senes omnia metuunt, propter Deos. catur, nee rata habet. 
' Old men fear everything but the ' Wlien Time is not called in as a 

gods' cotmsellor, neither does it ratify the 

decision. 



ANNOTATIONS. 

Many readers of Aristotle's admirable description (in the 
Bhetoric) of the Young and the Old, (in which he gives so decided 
a preference to the character of the young,) forget, that he is 
describing the same man at different periods of life, since the 
old must have been young. As it is, he gives just the right 
view of the character of the ' natural man,' (as the Apostle Paul 
expresses it,) which is, to become — on the whole, — gradually 



* ' He remained the same ; but the same was no longer becoming to him.' — 
Cic. Brut. 95. 
' Tract. Course. 

' My fansies all are fled, 
And tract of time begins to weave 
Grey haires upon my head.' — Lord Vaux. 
(Tliis is supposed to be the original of Shakespere'e 
grave-digger's song in Hamlet.) 
' The last fell short of the first.' — Livy, xxxviii. 53, 



400 Of Youth and Age. [Essay xlii. 

worse, wlien no superior and purifying principle has been im- 
planted. Some people fancy that a man grows good by grow- 
ing old, without taking any particular pains about it. But ' The 
older the crab-tree the more crabs it bears,' says the proverb. 
Unless a correcting principle be engrafted, though a man may, 
perhaps, outgrow the vices and follies of youth ; but other vices, 
and even worse, will come in their stead. If, indeed, a wilding 
tree be grafted, when young, with a good fruit tree, then, the 
older it is, if it be kept Avell pruned, the more good fruit it will 
bear. 

'A man that is young in years may he old in hours, if he have 
lost no time.'' 

Many are apt to overlook, with regard to mental qualifica- 
tions, what Bacon has here said, that the junior in years may 
be the senior in experience. And this may be not only from 
his having had better opportunities, but also from his under- 
standing better how to learn from experience. ' Several dif- 
ferent men, who have all had equal, or even the very same, 
experience, that is, have been witnesses or agents in the same 
transactions, will often be found to resemble so many different 
men looking at the same book : one, perhaps, though he dis- ' 
tinctly sees black marks on white paper, has never learned his 
letters ; another can read, but is a stranger to the language in 
which the book is written ; another has an acquaintance with 
the language, but understands it imperfectly ; another is familiar 
with the language, but is a stranger to the subject of the book, 
and wants power or previous instruction to enable him fully to 
take in the author's drift ; while another again perfectly com- 
prehends the whole. 

' The object that strikes the eye is to all of these persons the 
same ; the difference of the impressions produced on the mind 
of each is referable to the differences in their minds.'* 

And this explains the fact, which I have already touched 
upon in the notes on the Essay 'Of seeming Wise,' namely, 
the great discrepancy that we find in the results of what are 
called Experience and Common-sense, as contradistinguished 
from Theory. 

* Political Economy, Lect. iii. 



Essay xlii.] Annotations. 401 

* Men are apt not to consider with snfficient attention, what 
it is that constitutes Experience in each point; so that frequently 
one man shall have credit for much Experience, in what relates 
to the matter in hand, and another, who, perhaps, possesses as 
much, or more, shall be underrated as wanting it. The vulgar, 
of all ranks, need to be warned, iirst, that time alone does not 
constitute Experience ; so that many years may have passed over 
a man's head, without his even having had the same opportunities 
of acquiring it, as another, much younger : secondly, that the 
longest practice in conducting any business in one way, does 
not necessarily confer any experience in conducting it .in a dif- 
ferent way : e. g. an experienced Husbandman, or Minister of 
State, in Persia, would be much at a loss in Europe ; and if 
they had some things less to learn than an entire novice, on the 
other hand they would have much to unlearn ; and, thirdly, that 
merely being conversant about a certain class of svhjects^ does 
not confer Experience in a case, where the Operations, and the 
End proposed, are different. It is said that there was an 
Amsterdam merchant, who had dealt largely in corn all his 
life, wlio. had never seen a field of wheat growing : this man 
had doubtless acquired, by Experience, an accurate judgment of 
the qualities of each description of corn, — of the best methods 
of storing it, — of the arts of buying and selling it at proper 
times, &c. ; but he would have been greatly at a loss in its cul- 
tivation; though he had been, in a certain way, long conversant 
about corn. Nearly similar is the Experience of a practised 
lawyer, (supposing him to be nothing more,) in a case of Legis- 
lation. Because he has been long conversant ahout Law., the 
unreflecting attribute great weight to his legislative judgment ; 
whereas his constant habits of fixing liis thoughts on what the 
law is, and withdrawing it from the irrelevant question of what 
the law ought to be ; — his careful observance of a multitude of 
rules, (which afiord the more scope for the display of his skill, 
in proportion as they are arbitrary and unaccountable,) with a 
studied indilference as to that which is foreign from his business, 
the convenience or i7ico7ivenience of those Kules — may be expected 
to operate unfavourably on his judgment in questions of Legis- 
lation : and are likely to counterbalance the advantages of his 
superior knowledge, even in such points as do bear on the 
question. 

34* 00 



402 Of Youth and Age. [Essay xlii. 

' Again, a person wlio is more properly to be regarded as an 
antiquarian than anything else, will sometimes be regarded as 
high authority in some subject respecting which he has perhaps 
little or no real knowledge or capacity, if he have collected a 
multitude of facts relative to it. Suppose for instance a man of 
much reading, and of retentive memory, but of unphilosopliicai 
mind, to have amassed a great collection of particulars respect- 
ing tlie writers on some science, the times when they flourished, 
the numbers of their followers, the editions of their works, &c., 
it is not unlikely lie may lead both others and himself into the 
belief that he is a great authority in that science : when perhaps 
he may in reality know — though a great deal about it — nothing 
of it. Such a man's mind, comj)ared with that of one really 
versed in the subject, is like an antiquarian armoury, full of 
curious old weapons, — many of them the more precious from 
having been long since superseded, — as compared with a well- 
stocked arsenal, containing all the most approved warlike im- 
plements fit for actual service. 

' In matters connected with Political-economy, the experience 
oi jpractical men is often appealed to in opposition to those who 
are called Theorists ; even though the latter perhaps are deducing 
conclusions from a wide induction of facts, while the experience 
of the others will often be found only to amount to their having 
been long conversant with the details of office, and having all 
that time gone on in a certain beaten track, from which they 
never tried, or witnessed, or even imagined a deviation. 

'So also the authority derived from experience oi a practical 
miner, — i. e. one who has wrought all his life in one mine, — 
will sometimes delude a speculator into a vain search for metal 
or coal, against the opinion perhaps of Theorists, i. e. persons 
of extensive geological observation. 

' ' It may be added, that there is a proverbial maxim wliich 
bears witness to the advantage sometimes possessed by an obser- 
vant bystander over those actually engaged in any transaction : 
— ' the looker-on often sees more of the game than the players.' 
Now the looker-on is precisely (in Greek 6ea)pb^) the Theo- 
rist. 

' ' When then 3^ou find any one contrasting, in this and in 
other sul)jects, what he calls ' experience,' with ' theory,' you will 
usually perceive on attentive examination, that he is in reality 



Essay xlii.] Annotations. 403 

comparing tlie results of a confined,, witli that of a wider expe- 
rience ; — a more imperfect and crude theory, with one more 
cautiously framed, and based on a more copious induction.' " 

* The experience of age in neio things cd>useth them.'' 

The old are more liable to the rashness of the horse, and the 
younger to that of the moth ; the distinction between which 
I have before pointed out. The old again are more likely than 
the young, to claim, and to give, an undue deference to the 
judgment, in reference to some new plan or system, of those 
who are the most thoroughly familiar with the old one. On 
this point I have already dwelt in my remarks on Innovation. 

' JSfaturcs that have much heat are not ri;pe for action till they 
havejpassed the meridian of their years? 

There is a strange difference in the ages at which different 
persons acquire such maturity as they are capable of, and at 
which some of those who have greatly distinguished themselves 
have done, and been, something remarkable. Some of them 
have left the world at an earlier age than that at which others 
have begun their career of eminence. It was remarked to the 
late Dr. Arnold by a friend, as a matter of curiosity, that 
several men who have filled a considerable page in history 
have lived but forty-seven years ; (Philip of Macedon, Joseph 
Addison, Sir William Jones, Nelson, Pitt,) and he was told 
in a jocular way to beware of the forty-seventh year. He 
was at that time in robust health ; but he died at forty-seven ! 
Alexander died at thirty-two ; Sir Stamford Kaffles at forty- 
five. Sir Isaac Newton did indeed live to a great age ; but it 
is said that all his discoveries were made before he was forty ; 
so that he might have died at that age, and been as celebrated 
as he is. 

On the other hand, Ilerschel is said to have taken to 
astronomy at forty-seven. Swedenborg, if he had died at sixty, 
would have been remembered by those that did remember him, 
merely as a sensible worthy man, and a veiy considerable 
mathematician. The strange fancies which took possession of 



See Elements of Rketoric, Part II., ch. iii., § 5, pp. 221-224 



404 Of Youth and Age. [Essay xlii. 



after tliat age. 

Some persons resemble certain trees, such as the nut, which 
flowers in February, and ripens its fruit in September ; or the 
juniper and the arbutus, which take a whole year or more to 
perfect their fruit ; and others the cherry, which takes betweeii 
two and three months. 

' There he some have an over early ripeness in their yearSy which 
fadeth hetimesJ 

One may meet with some who are clever as children, and, 
without falling back, remain stationary at a certain age, and 
thus are neither more nor less than clever children all their 
life. You may find one who has thus stood still at about nine 
or ten ; another at about fourteen ; another at about seventeen 
or eighteen, and so on. And it is a curious thing to meet at 
pretty long intervr.sl, a person whom one has known as a 
remarkably forward, and (supposed) promising youth, and to 
find that at forty, fifty, sixty, he has hardly either gained or 
lost anything since he was in his teens. An elder-tree will 
grow as much in the first three or four years as an oak in ten 
or twelve ; but at thirty years the oak will have outgrown the 
elder, and will continue gaining on it ever after. 

As for the decay of mental faculties which often takes place 
in old age, every one is aware of it ; but many overlook one 
kind of it which is far from uncommon ; namely, when a man 
of superior intelligence, without falling into anything like 
dotage, sinks into an ordinary man. Whenever there is a mix- 
ture of genius with imbecility, every one perceives that a decay 
has taken place. But when a person of a great intellectual 
eminence becomes (as is sometimes the case) an ordinary average 
man, just such as many have been all their life, no one is likely 
to suspect that the faculties have been impaired by age, except 
those who have seen much of him in his brighter days. 

Even so, no one, on looking at an ordinary dwelling-house 
in good repair, would suspect that it had been once a splendid 
palace ; but when we view a stately old castle, or cathedral, 
partly in ruins, we see at once that it cannot be what it origin- 
ally was. 



Essay xlii.] Annotatio7is. 405 

Tlie decay wliicli is most usually iwtked in old people, both 
by othere and by tliemselves, is a decay of memory. But this 
is perhajxs partly from its being a defect easily to be detected 
and distinctly proved. When a decay oi judgment takes place 
— which is perhaps oftener the case than is commonly supposed 
— the party himself is not likely to be conscious of it ; and his 
friends are more likely to overlook it, and even when they do 
perceive it, to be backward in giving him warning, for fear of 
being met with such a rebuff as Gil Bias received in return for 
his candour from the Archbishop, his patron. 

It is remarkable, that there is nothing less promising than, 
in early youth, a certain full-formed, settled, and, as it may be 
called adult character. A lad who has, to a degree that excites 
wonder and admiration, the character and demeanour of an 
intelligent man of mature age, will probably be tJmt, and 
nothing more, all his life, and wall cease accordingly to be any- 
thing remarkable, because it was the precocity alone that ever 
made him so. It is remarked by greyhound-fanciers that a 
well-formed, compact-shaped puppy never makes a fleet dog. 
Tliey see more promise in the loose-jointed, awkward, clums^ 
ones. And even so, there is a kind of crudity and unsettled- 
ness in the minds of those young persons who turn out ulti- 
mately the most eminent. 

* Same natural disjwsitimis which have hettsr graxie in youth 
than in age, such as is a fluent and luxuriant .speech.'' 

It is remarkable, that in point of style of writing. Bacon 
himself, at different periods of life, showed differences just 
opjX)site to what most would have expected. His earlier writings 
are the most unornamented ; and he grew more ornate as he 
advanced. So also Burke. His earliest work. On the Suhlime, 
is in a brief, dry, philosophical style ; and he became florid to 
an excess as he grew older. 



ESSAY XLIII. OF BEAUTY. » 

VIRTUE is like a rich stone, best plain set; and surely 
virtue is best in a body that is comely, though not of 
delicate features, and that hath rather dignity of presence than 
beauty of aspect ; neither is it almost' seen that very beautiful 
persons are otherwise of great virtue, as if nature were rather 
busy not to err, than in labour to produce excellency,^ and 
therefore they prove accomplished, but not of great spirit, and 
study rather behaviour than virtue. But this holds not always ; 
for Augustus Caesar, Titus Yespasianus, Philip le Bel of France, 
Edward TV. of England, Alcibiades of Athens, Ismael the 
sophy^ of Persia, were all high and great spirits, and yet the 
most beautiful men of their times. In beauty, that of favour* 
is more tlian that of colour, and that of decent' and gracious^ 
motion more than that of favom*. That is the best part of 
beauty which a picture cannot express, no, nor the first sight 
of the life. There is no excellent beauty that hath not some 
strangeness in the proportion. A man cannot tell whether 
Apelles or Albert Durer were the more' tritler ; whereof the one 



' Almost. I^or the most part ; generally. ' Who is there almost, whose mind 
at some time or other, love or anger, fear or grief, has not fastened to some clog, 
that it could not turn itself to any other object.' 

^ Excellency. Excellence. ' Tliat the excellmcy of the power may be of Go>d, 
and not of us.' — 2 Cor. iv. 7. 
' Sophy. Sultan. 

' With letters, him in cautious wise. 
They straightway sent to Persia ; 
But wrote to the Sophy him to kill.' 

— St. GeoD-ge and the Dragon. 
* Favour. Cowitenance. 

' I know your favour well, Percy, 
Though now you have no sea-cap on your head.' — ShaJcespere. 
■* Decent. Becmning ; fit. ' All pastimes, generally, which be joyned with 
labour and in open place, and on the day-lighte, be not only comelie and decent, 
but verie necessarie for a courtly gentleman.' — Roger Ascham. 
' Those thousand decencies that daily flow 
From all her words and actions.' — Milton. 
' Gracious. Graceful. 

' There was ne'er such a gracious creature born.' — Shakespere. 
' More. Greater ; great. ' The moreness of Christ's virtues are not measured 
by worldly moreness.' — Wickliff. 



Essay xliii.] Of Beauty. 407 

would make a personage by geometrical proportions, tlie other, 
by taking the best parts out of divers' faces, to make one 
excellent. Such personages, I think, would please no body but 
the painter that made them — not but I think a painter may 
make a better face than ever was, but he must do it by a kind 
of felicity (as a musician that maketh an excellent air in music), 
and not by rule. A man shall see faces, that if you examine 
them part by part you shall find never a good, and yet altogether 
do well. If it be true that the principal part of beauty is in 
decent motion, certainly it is no marveP though pei-sons in 
years seem many times more amiable : ' Pulchrorum autumnus 
pulcher'" — for no youth can be comely but by pardon, and con- 
sidering the youth as to make up the comelinass. Beauty is as 
summer-fruits, which are easy to corrupt, and cannot last, and, 
for the most part, it makes a dissolute youth, and an age a little 
out of countenance ; but yet certainly again, if it light well, it 
maketh virtue shine, and vices blush. 



' Divers. Many. ' For that divers of the English do maintain and succour sun- 
dry thieves, robbers, and rebels, because that the same do put them into their safe- 
guard and counsel . . . ' — Statutes and Ordinances made in the 4th year of Henry 
VI., before the Most Reverend Richard, Archbishop of Dublin, and Lord Justice 
of Ireland, a. d. 1440. 

^ Marvel. A wonder. ' No marvel for Satan himself is transformed into aa 
angel of light.' — 2 Cor. xi. 14. 

^ ' Tlie autumn of the beautiful is beautiful' 



ESSAY XLIV. OF DEFOEMITY. 

TAEFOEMED persons are commonly even with nature ; for 
-■-^ as nature hath done ill by them, so do they by nature, 
being for the most part (as the Scripture saith) ' void of natural 
aifection ;" and so they have their revenge of nature. Cer- 
tainly there is a consent^ between the body and the mind, and 
' where nature erreth in the one she ventureth in the other' 
(' Ubi peccat in uno, perichtatiu* in altero') : but because there 
is in man an election touching the frame of his mind, and a 
necessity in the frame of his body, the stars of natural inclina- 
tion are sometimes obscured by the sun of discipline and virtue ; 
therefore, it is good to consider of deformity, not as a sign 
which is more deceivable, but as a cause which seldom faileth 
of the etfect. Whosoever hath anything fixed in his person 
that doth induce contempt, hath also a perpetual spur in him- 
self to rescue and deliver himself from scorn ; therefore, all 
deformed persons are extreme' bold — ^first, as in their own 
defence, as being exposed to scorn, but in process of time by a 
general habit. Also, it stirreth in them industry, and especially 
of this kind, to watch and observe the weakness of others, that 
they may have somewhat to repay. Again, in their superiors, 
it quencheth jealousy tow^irds them, as persons that they think 
they may at pleasure despise ; and it layeth their competitors 
and emulators asleep, as never believing they should be in 
possibility of advancement, till they see them in possession ; so 
that upon the mat^fer,* in a great wit, defonnity is an advantage 
to rising. Kings, in ancient times (and at this present, in 
some countries), w^ere wont* to put great trust in eunuchs. 



" Rmn. i. 31. 

^ Consent. Agreement. 

' With one consent, let all the earth 
To God their cheerful voices raise.' — ^Tate's Verswti of Psalm C. 
' Extreme. Extremely. 

* Matter. Whole. (' Upon the matter' — On the whole.) ' He grants the deluge 
to have come so very near the matter, that but very few escaped.' — Tillotson. 

' Wont. To he accustomed. ' Now at the feast the governor was wont to release 
unto them a prisoner.' — Matt, xxvii. 15. 

' I this night, have dream'd, 
If dreamed, not as I oft am wont of thee.' — Milton. 



Essay xliv.] Annotation. 409 

because they that are envious towards all are obnoxious' and 
officious towards one ; but yet their trust towards them hath 
rather been as to good spials'' and good whisperers than good 
magistrates and officers ; and much like is the reason of 
deformed persons. Still the ground is, they will, if they be of 
spirit, seek to free themselves from scorn, which must be either 
by virtue or malice ;' and therefore, let it not be marvelled,* if 
sometimes they prove excellent persons ; as was Agesilaus, 
Zanger the son of Solyman, ^sop, Gasca, president of Peru ; 
and Socrates may go likewise amongst them, with others. 



ANNOTATION. 



Bacon is speaking principally of oi^ginal deformities, not 
such as result from accident or disease. And it is very remark- 
able how much less tendency these latter have, than the other, 
to produce such effects as he is speaking of. 



' Obnoxious. Subject ; submissive. ' The writings of lawyers, which are tied 
and obnoxious to their particular laws.' — Bacon. 

'■' Spials. Spies. 

' The Prince's spials have inform 'd me.' — Shakespere. 

' Malice. Vice. (Not, as now, restricted to malevolence.) ' In malice be ye 
children.' — 1 Cor. xiv. 20. ' Not using your liberty for a cloak of malitiousness'— 
1 Pet. ii. 16. 

* Marvel. To uwider at. ' Marvel not that I said unto thee, ye must be born 
again.' — Jo/m iii. 



ESSAY XLV. OF BUILDING. 

HOUSES are built to live in, and not to look on ; therefore, 
let use be preferred before' uniformity, except where 
both may be had. Leave the goodly fabrics of houses, for 
beauty, only to the ench-anted palaces of the poets, who build 
them with small cost. He that builds a fair house upon an ill 
seat,^ committeth himself to prison — neither do I reckon it an 
ill seat only where the air is unwholsome, but likewise where 
the air is unequal : as you shall see many fine seats set upon a 
knap^ of ground, environed with liigher hills round about it, 
whereby the heat of the sun is pent in, and the wind gathereth 
as in troughs ; so as* you shall have, and that suddenly, as great 
diversity of heat and cold as if you dwelt in several places. 
Keither is it ilP air only that maketh an ill seat, but ill ways, 
ill markets ; and if you consult with Momus, ill neighbours. I 
speak not of many more ; want of water, want of wood, shade, 
and shelter, want of fruitfulness, and mixture of grounds of 
several natures ; want of prospect, w^ant of level grounds, want 
of places at some near distance for sports of hunting, hawking, 
and races ; too near the sea, too remote ; having the commodity® 
of navigable rivers, or the discommodity' of their overflowing ; 
too far off from great cities, wdiicli may hinder business ; or too 



* Preferred before. Preferred to. 

' Spirit, that dost prefer 
Before all temples, the upright heart and pure, 
Instruct me.' — Milton. 
"^ Seat. Site. ' It remaineth now that -we find out the scat of Eden.' 
Raleigh. 

^ Knap. A prominence ; a knoll. 

' Hark, on knap of yonder hill. 
Some sweet shepherd tunes his quill.' — Brown. 

* As. Tliat. See page 23. 
» 111. Bad. 

' There some ill planet reigns.' — Shakespere. 

* Commodity. Advantage ; convenience. See page 390. 
' Discommodity, Disadvantage. See page 390. 



Essay xlv.] Of Building. 411 

near them, wliicli lurclietli* all provisions, and maketli everj- 
thing clear ; where a man hath a great living laid together, and 
where he is scanted f all which, as it is impossible perhaps to 
find together, so it is good to know them, and think of them, 
that a man may take as many as he can ; and, if he have several 
dwellings, that he sort' them so, that what he wanteth in the 
one he may find in the other. Lucullus answered Pompey well, 
who, when he saw his stately galleries and rooms so large and 
lightsome, in one of his houses, said, ' Surely, an excellent place 
for summer, but how do you in winter?' Lucullus answered, 
' "Why do you not think me as wise as some fowls are, that ever 
change their abode towards the winter ?'* 

To pass from the seat to the house itself, we will do as Cicero 
doth in the orator's art, who writes books De Orators, and a 
book he entitles Orator; whereof the former delivers the 
precepts of the art, and the latter the perfection. We will 
therefore describe a princely palace, making a brief model 
thereof; for it is strange to see, now in Europe such huge 
buildings as the Vatican and Escurial, and some others be, and 
yet scarce a very fair' room in them. 

First, therefore, I say, you cannot have a perfect palace, 
except you have two severaP sides ; a side for the banquet, as 
is spoken of in the book of Esther, and a side for the house- 
hold ; the one for feasts and triumphs,' and the other for 
dwelling. I understand both these sides to be not only returns, 
but parts of the front ; and to be uniform without, though 
severally partitioned within ; and to be on both sides of a great 
and stately tower in the midst of the front, that, as it were, 
joineth them together on either hand. I would have, on the 



^ Lurch. To absorb. (From I'ourche — a game in which the stakes are put into 
a box, where the loser is obliged to leave them. Hence perhaps the expression 
' to be left in the lurch.') 

"Scanted. Limited; restricted. 'I am scanted in the pleasure of dwelling on 
your actions.' — Dri/dcn. 

' Sort. To chme. 

' To sort some gentleman well skilled in music' — Shakespere. 

* Plut, Vit. Lucnll. 30. 

* Fair. Handso?ne. 

' Carry him to mj fairest chamber.' — Shakespere. 

* Several. Separate. ' He dwelt in a several house.' — 2 Kings xv. 5. 
^ Triumphs. Shows on festive occasions. See page 363. 



413 Of Building. [Essay xlv. 

side of tlie banquet in front, one only goodly room above stairs, 
of some forty feet higli ; and under it a room for a dressing, or 
preparing place, at times of triumphs. On the other side, 
which is the household side, I wish it divided at the first into a 
hall and a chapel, with a partition between, both of good state 
and bigness,^ and those not to go all the length, but to have at 
the farther end a winter and a summer parlour, both fair ; and 
under these rooms a fair and large cellar sunk under ground : 
and likewise some privy kitchens, with butteries and pantries, 
and the like. As for the tower, I would have it two stories, of 
eighteen feet high a-piece above the two wings ; and goodly leads 
upon the top, railed with statues interposed ; and the same 
tower to be divided into rooms, as shall be thought fit. The 
stairs likewise to the upper rooms, let them be upon a fair and 
open newel, and finely railed in with images of wood cast into a 
brass colour, and a very fair landing place at the top. But this 
to be, if you do not point" any of the lower rooms for a dining 
place of servants ; for otherwise, you shall have the servants' 
dinner after your own, for the steam of it will come up as in a 
tunnel. And so much for the front, only I understand the 
height of the first stairs to be sixteen feet, which is the height 
of the lower room. 

Beyond this front is there to be a fair court, but three sides 
of it of a far lower building than the front ; and in all the four 
corners of that court fair staircases, cast into turrets on the 
outside, and not within the rows of buildings themselves ; but 
those towers are not to be of the height of the front, but rather 
proportionable to the lower building. Let the court not be 
paved, for that striketh up a great heat in summer, and much 
Qold in winter, but only some side alleys with a cross, and the 
quarters to graze, being kept shorn, but not too near shorn. 
The row of return on the banquet side, let it be all stately 
galleries ; in which galleries let there be three or five fine 
cupolas in the length of it, placed at equal distance, and fine 
coloured windows of several works; on the household side. 



' Bigness. Size, whether great or small. ' Several sorts of rays make vibrations 
of several bignesses.' — Sir Isaac Newton. 
* Point. To appoint. 

' To celebrate the solemn bridall cheere 
'Twixt Peleus and dame Thetis pointed there.' — Spenser. 



Essay xlv.] Of Building. 413^ 

chambers of presence and ordinary entertainments, with some 
bed-chambers ; and let all three sides be a double house, without 
thorough lights on the sides, that you may have rooms from the 
sun, both for forenoon and afternoon. Cast' it also that you 
may have rooms both for summer and winter, shady for summer 
and warm for winter. You shall have sometimes fair houses so 
full of glass, that one cannot tell where to become'' to be out of 
the sun or cold. For embowed' windows, I hold them of good 
use ; in cities, indeed, upright do better, in respect of the uni- 
formity towards the street ; for they be pretty retiring places for 
conference, and, besides, they keep both the wind and sun off — 
for that which would strike almost through the room, doth 
scarce pass the window ; but let them be but few, four in the 
court, on the sides only. 

Beyond this court, let there be an inward* court, of the same 
square and height, which is to be environed with the garden on 
all sides ; and in the inside, cloistered on all sides upon decent 
and beautiful arches, as high as the first storey; on the under 
storey, towards the garden, let it be turned to a grotto, or place 
of shade, or estivation ; and only have opening and windows 
towards the garden, and be level upon the floor, no whit' sunk 
under ground, to avoid all dampishness ; and let there be a 
fountain, or some fair work of statues in the midst of the 
court, and to be paved as the other court was. These buildings 
to be for privy lodgings on both sides, and the end for privy 
galleries ; whereof you must foresee that one of them be for an 
infirmary, if the prince or any special person should be sick, 
with chambers, bed-chamber, ' antecamera' [' anti-chamber'], 



» Cast. To plan. 

' From that day forth, I cast in careful mind 
To keep her out.' — Spenser. 
" Become. To betake oneself. 

' I cannot joy until I be resolved 
Where our right valiant father 
Is become,' — Shakespere. 
' Embowed. Bowed. 

' I saw a bull as white as driven snow, 
With gilden horns, embowed like tlie moon.' — Spenser. 
* Inward. 7?!?;*^. ' Tliough our outward man perish, yet the inward man ig 
renewed day by day.' — Cor. iv. 

'• Whit. The least degree. See page 393. 

85* 



414 Of Building. [Essay xlv. 

and ' recamera,' [' retiring-cliamher,' or 'back-chamber'] join- 
ing to it ; this upon the second storey. Upon the ground storey, 
a fair gallery, open, upon j)illars ; and upon the third storey 
likewise, an open gallery upon pillars, to take the j^rospect and 
freshness of the garden. At both corners of the farther side, 
by way of return, let tliere be two delicate or rich cabinets, 
daintily' paved, richly hanged,^ glazed with crystalline glass, 
and a rich cuj^ola in the midst, and all other elegancy that may 
be thought upon. Li the upper gallery, too, I wish that there 
may be, if the place w^ill yield it, some fountains running in 
divers^ places from the wall, with some fine avoidances.* And 
thus much for the model of the palace ; save that you must 
have, before you come to the front, three courts — a green court 
plain, with a wall about it ; a second court of the same, but 
more garnished with little turrets, or rather embellishments, 
upon the wall ; and a third court, to make a square with the 
front, but not to be built, nor yet enclosed with a naked wall, 
but enclosed with terraces leaded aloft, and fairly garnished on 
the three sides, and cloistered on the inside with pillars, and 
not with arches below. As for offices, let them stand at 
distance, with some low galleries to pass from them to the 
palace itself. 

^ Daintily. Elegantly. See page 1. 

^ Hanged. Hung (with draperies). ' Music is better in rooms wainscotted than 
hanged.' — Bacon. ' 

' Divers. Many. See page 191. 

* Avoidances. Water-courses. ' Tlie two avoidayiccs or passages of water.' — 
Statute, 8th year of King Henry VII. 



•:// J 



ESSAY XLVI. OF GARDENS. 

GOD ALMIGHTY first planted a garden, and, indeed, it is 
the purest of human pleasures ; it is the greatest refresh- 
ment to the spirits of man, without which building and palaces 
are but gross handyworks : and a man shall ever see, that when 
ages grow to civility' and elegancy'^ men come to build stately, 
sooner than to garden finely ; as if gardening were the greater 
perfection. I do hold it, in the royal ordering of gardens, there 
ought to be gardens for all the months in the year, in which, 
severally, things of beauty^ may be then in season. For De- 
cember and January, and the latter part of Kovember, you 
must take such things as are green all winter ; holly, ivy, bays, 
juniper, cypress-trees, yew, pines, fir-trees, rosemary, lavender; 
periwinkle, the white, the purple, and the blue ; germander, 
flag, orange-trees, lemon-trees, and myrtles, if they be stoved ; 
and sweet marjoram, warm set. There followeth, for the latter 
part of January and February, the mezereon tree, which then 
blossoms ; crocus vernus, both the yellow and the grey ; prim- 
roses, anemones, the early tulip, hyacinthus orientalis, chamairis, 
fritellaria. For March, there come violets, especially the single 
blue, which are the earliest ; the early daftbdil, the daisy, the 
almond-tree in blossom, the peach tree in blossom, the cornelian- 
tree in blossom, sweet briar. In April, follow the double white 
violet, the wall-fiower, the stock-gilliflower, the cowslip, flower- 
de-luces,^ and lilies of all natures ; rosemary flowers, the tulip, 
the double peony, the pale daftbdil, the French honeysuckle, the 
cherry-tree in blossom, the damascene and plum-trees in blossom, 
the white thorn in leaf, the lilac-tree. In May and June come 
pinks of all sorts, especially the blush pink ; roses of all kinds, 



' Civility. Civilization. 

' Wlieresoe'er her conquering eagles fled, 
Arts, learning, and civility were sjiread.' — Denliam. 

* Elegancy. See page 363. 

^ Things of beauty. Beautiful tilings. 

'A thing of beauty is a joy for ever!' 

* Flower-de-luces. Ihe iris. 



416 Of Gardens. [Essay xlvi. 

except the musk, which comes later ; honeysuckle, strawberries, 
biigloss, columbine, the French marigold, tlos Africanus, cherry- 
tree in fruit, ribes,' figs in fruit, rasps,'' vine flowers, lavender 
in flowers, the sweet satyrian, with the white flower : herba 
muscaria, lilium convallium, the apple-tree in blossom. In July 
come gilliflowers of all varieties, musk roses, the lime-tree in 
blossom, early pears, and plums in fruit, gennitings,' quodlins.* 
In August come plums of all sorts in fruit, pears, apricocks,* 
barberries,^ filberds,'' musk melons, monks-hoods, of all colours. 
In September come grapes, apples, poppies of all colours, 
peaches, melocotones,' nectarines, cornelians," wardens,'" quinces. 
In October and the beginning of November come services," 
medlars, bullaces, roses cut or removed to come late, hollyoaks,'" 
and such like. These particulars are for the climate of London ; 
but my meaning is perceived, that you may have ver peirpetuum^^ 
as the place aflbrds. 

And because the breath of flowers is far sweeter in the air 
(where it comes and goes, like the warbling of music) than in 
the hand, therefore nothing is more fit for that delight, than to 



* Ribes. Currants. 

' Rasps. Raspberries. 

' Now will the coi'inths, now the rasps, supply 
Delicious draughts.' — Phillips. 
^ Gennitings. Jennethings (June-eating ; but supposed by some to be a corrup- 
tion from Jeneton, being so called after a Scotch lady of that name.) 

* Quodlins, Codlins. 

* Apricocks. Api-icots. 

' Go bind thou up yon dangling apricocks, 
Which, like unruly children, make tlieir sire 
Stoop with oppression of their prodigal weight.' — Shakespere. 

* Barberries. Berberries. 
T Filberds. Filberts. 

' I'll bring thee 
To clustering Jilberds.' — Shakespere. 

* Melocotone. A large peach. ® Cornelians. Chemes. 
'° Wardens. A large keeping pear. 

' Now must all shoots of pears alike be set, 
Crustinian, Syrian pears, and wardens great.' — May's Virgil. 
" Services. A plant and fruit (Sorbus). ' October is drawn in a garment of 
yellow and carnation ; in his left hand a basket of services, medlars, and other 
fruits that ripen late.' — Peacham. 

" Hollyoaks. Hollyhocks. ' Hollyoaks far exceed poppies for their durableness, 
and are far more ornamental.' — Mortimer. 
" A perpetual spring. 



Essay xlvi.] Of Gardens. 417 

know what be the flowers and plants that do best perfume the 
air. Hoses, damask and red, are fast' flowers of their smells ; 
so that you may walk by a whole row of them, and find 
nothing of their sweetness, yea,^ though it be in a morning's 
dew. Bays, likewise, yield no smell as they grow, rosemary 
little, nor sweet maijoram ; that which, above all others, yields 
the sweetest smell in the air, is the violet ; especially the white 
double violet, which comes twice a-year — about the middle of 
April, and about Bartholomew-tide. Next to that is the musk 
rose ; then the strawberry leaves dying, with a most excellent 
cordial smell ; then the flowers of the vines — it is a little dust 
like the dust of a bent,' which grows upon the cluster in the 
first coming forth — then sweetbriar, then wall-flowers, which 
are very delightful to be set under a parlour or lower chamber 
window ; then pinks and gilliflowers,* especially the matted pink 
and clove gilliflowers ; then the flowers of the lime-tree ; then 
the honeysuckles, so they be somewhat afar ofi*. Of bean- 
flowers I speak not, because they are field flowers ; but those 
which perfume the air most delightfully, not passed by as the 
rest, but being trodden upon and crushed, are three, that is, 
burnet, wild thyme, and water-mints ; therefore, you are to set 
whole alleys of them, to have the pleasure when you walk or 
tread. 

For gardens (speaking of those which are, indeed, prince- 
like,* as we have done of buildings), the contents ought not well 
to be under thirty acres of ground, and to be divided into three 



^ Fast. Tenacious. 

' Yet all this while in a mo&t fast sleep.' — Shakespere. 
"^ Yea. Nay ; not only this, but mare than this. ' For behold this self-same thing 
that ye sorrowed after a godly sort, what carefulness it wrought in you, what 
clearing of yourselves, yea what indignation, yea what fear, yea what vehement 
desii'e, yea what zeal, yea what revenge.' — 2 Cor. vii. 11. 

' I am weary ; yea my memory is tired.' — Shakespere. 
^ Bent. Bent-grass. 

' His spear a bent both stiff and strong. 
And well near of two inches long.' — Drayton. 
' June is drawn in a mantle of dark grass green upon a garland of bents, king-cups, 
and maiden-hair.' — Peacham. 

* This name probably comes from the old French gilofre, for girofe, a clove de- 
rived from caryopliyllus. 

* Prince-like. Princely. 

' The wrongs he did me have nothing prince-like.' — Shakespere. 

DD 



418 Of Gardens. [Essaj xlvi. 

parts ; a green in the entrance, a heath or desert in the going 
forth, and the main garden in the midst, besides alleys on both 
sides ; and I like well that four acres of ground be assigned to 
the green, six to the heath, four and four to either' side, 
and twelve to the main garden. The green hath two pleasures : 
the one, because nothing is more pleasant to the eye than green 
grass kept finely shorn ; the other, because it will give you a 
fair alley in the midst, by which you may go in front upon a 
stately edge, which is to enclose the garden : but because the 
alley will be long, and, in great heat of the year, or day, you 
ought not to buy the shade in the garden by going in the sun 
through the green, therefore you are, of either side the green, 
to plant a covert alley, upon carpenters' work, about twelve 
feet in height, by which you may go in shade into the garden. 
As for the making of knots, or figures, w^th divers-coloured^ 
earths, that they may lie under the windows of the house on 
that side on which the garden stands, they be but toys : you 
may see as good sights many times in tarts. The garden is 
best to be square, encompassed on all the four sides with a 
stately arched hedge; the arches to be upon pillars of car- 
penters' work, of some ten feet high, and six feet broad, and 
the spaces between of the same dimensions with the breadth of 
the arch. Over the arches let there be an entire hedge of 
some four feet high, framed also upon carpenters' work; and 
upon the upper hedge, over every arch, a little turret, with a 
belly^ enough to receive a cage of birds : and over every space 
between the arches some other little figure, with broad plates 
of round coloured glass gilt, for the sun to play upon: but this 
hedge I intend to be raised upon a bank, not steep, but gently 
slope," of some six feet, set all with flowers. Also, I under- 
stand that this square of the garden should not be the whole 



* Either. Each. See page 302. 

* Divers-coloured. OfvarioH.s colours. 

' Smiling Cupids, 
With divers-coloured fans.' — ShaJcespere. 
' Belly. See page 198. 
"* Slope. Sloping. 

' Murmuring waters fall 
Down the slope hills, dispersed, or in a lake, 
Tliat to the fringed banks, with myrtle crown'd,. 
Her crystal mirror holds, unite their streams.' — Milton 



Essay xlvi.] Of Gardens. 419 

breadth of the ground, but to leave on either side ground 
enough for diversity of side alleys, unto which the two covert 
alleys of the green may deliver you ; but there must be no 
alleys with hedges at either end of this great enclosure — not at 
the hither end, for letting' your prospect upon this fair hedge 
from the green — nor at t\iQ farther end, for letting your prospect 
from the hedge through the arches upon the heath. 

For the ordering of the ground within tlie great hedge, I 
leave it to variety of device, advising, nevertheless, that what- 
soever form you cast it into first,. it be not too busy,^ or full of 
work ; wherein I for my part, do not like images cut out in 
juniper or other garden stuff" — they be for children. Little 
low hedges, round like welts,^ wnth some pretty pyramids, I like 
well ; and in some places fair columns, upon frames of car- 
penter's work. I would also have the alleys spacious and fair. 
You may have closer alleys upon the side grounds, but none in 
the main garden. I wish, also, in the very middle, a fair 
mount, with tlime ascents and alleys, enough for four to walk 
abreast, which I^vould have to be perfect circles, without any 
bulwarks or embossments ;* and the whole mount to be thirty 
feet high, and some fine banqueting-house, with some chimneys 
neatly cast, and without too much glass. 

For ftuntains, they are a great beaut}" and refreshment ; but 
pools mar all, and make the garden unwholesome, and full of 
flies and frogs. Fountains I intend to be of two natures, the 
one that sprinkleth or spouteth water ; the other a fair receipt* 
of water, of some thirty or forty feet square, but without any 
fish, or slime, or mud. For the first, the ornaments of images, 
gilt, or of marble, which are in use, do well; but the main 
matter is so to convey the water as^ it never stay, either in the 
bowds or in the cistern — that the water be never by rest disco- 



' Let. To hinder. ' Oftentimes I purposed to come unto you, but was let hith- 
erto.' — Romans i. 13. 

"^ Busy (now only applied to the agent, and not to the subject.) Elaborate. 

^ Welts. Edging ; border. ' Certain scioli, or smatterers, may have some edging 
or trimming, of a scholar, a toelt or so ; but no more.' — Ben Jonson. 

^ Embossments. Anytldng standing out from the rest. ' It expresses the great 
embossment of the figure.' — Addison. 

' Receptacle ; place for receiving. ' He saw Matthew sitting at the receipt of 
custom.' — Mark ii. 14. 

• As. That. See page 23. 



420 Of Gardens. [Essay xlvi. 

loured, gi-een or red, or the like, or gather any mossiness or 
putrefaction : besides that, it is to be cleansed every day by the 
hand — also some steps up to it, and some fine pavement about 
it do well. As tor the other kind of fountain, which we may 
call a bathing-pool, it may admit mucli curiosity' and beauty, 
wherewith we will not trouble ourselves : as, that the bottom 
be finely paved, and with images : the sides likewise ; and withal 
embellished with coloured glass, and such things of lustre, 
encompassed also with fine rails of low statuas f but the main 
point is the same which we mentioned in the former kind of 
fountain, which is, that the water be in perpetual motion, fed 
by a water higher than the pool, and delivered into it by fair 
spouts, and then discharged away under ground, by some 
equality of bores, that it stay little ; and for fine devices, of 
arching water without spilling, and making it rise in several 
forms (of feathere, drinking glasses, canopies, and the hke), 
they be pretty things to look on, but nothing to health and 
sweetness. ^ 

For the heath, which was the tliird part of our plot, I wished" 
it to be framed as much as may be to a natural wildness. 
Trees I would have none in it, but some thickets made only of 
sweetbriar and honeysuckle, and some wild vines amongst, and 
the ground set with violets, strawberries, and primro* s ; for 
these are sweet, and prosper in the shade, and these are to be 
in the heath here and there, not in any order. I like also little 
heaps, in the nature of mole-hills (such as are in wild heaths), 
to be set, some with wild thyme, some with pinks, some with 
germander, that gives a good flower to the eye ; some vrith peri- 
winkle, some with violets, some with strawberries, some with 
cowslips, some witli daisies, some with red roses, some with lilium 
convallium, some with sweet-williams red, some with bear's-foot, 
and the like low flowers, being withal sweet and sightly — part 
of which heaps to be with standards of little bushes pricked 
upon their top, and part witliout — the standards to be roses, 
juniper, holly, berberries (but here and there, because of the 
smell of their blossom), red currants, gooseberries, rosemary, 



' Curiosity. Elegance. 

' ' Even at the base of Pompeys statua.' — Shakspere, Jul. Ccesar. 



Essay xlvi.] Of Gardens. 421 

bays, sweetbriar, and such like : but these standards to be kept 
with cutting, that they grow not out of course. 

For the side grounds, you are to fill them with variety of 
alleys, private to give a full shade ; some of them wheresoever' 
the sun be. You are to frame some of them likewise for 
shelter, that, when the wind blows sharp, you may walk as in 
n gallery ^ and those alleys must be likewise hedged at both 
ends, to keep out tlie wind, and these closer alleys must be ever 
finely gravelled, and no grass, because of going' wet. In many 
of these alleys, likewise, you are to set fruit-trees of all sorts, 
as well upon the walls as in rangas : and this should be gene- 
rail}^ observed, that the borders wherein you plant your fruit- 
trees be fair, and large, and low, and not steep, and set with 
fine flowei^, but thin and sparingly, lest they deceive* the trees. 
At the end of both the side gmunds I would have a mount of 
isome pretty height, leaving the wall of the enclosure breast-high, 
to look abroad into the fields- 

For the main garden, I do not deny but there should be some 
fair alleys ranged on both sides, with fruit-trees, and some 
pretty tufts of fruit-trees and arbours with seats, set in some 
decent order; but these to be by no means set too thick, but 
to leave the main garden so as it be not close, but the air open 
and free. For as for shade, I would have you i*est upon the 
alleys of the side grounds, there to walk, if you be disposed, in 
the heat of the year or day ; but to make account, that the 
gnain garden is for the more temperate parts of the year, and, 
in the heat of summer, for the morning and the evening, or 
overcast days. 

For aviaries, I like them not, except they be of that large- 
ness as they may be turfed, and have living plants and bushes 
set in them, that the birds may have more scope and natural 



* Wheresoever. WhttreveT. ' Whertsmver the body is, thither will the eagles 
be gathered together.' — Lnhe xviL 37. 

* G«, Tq tend to. 

' There be some \romen 

.... would have gone near to fall in love with him.' — Shakespere. 
■• Deceive. To deprive by stealth ; to rob. ' And so deceive the spirits of the 
body, and rob them of their nourishment.' — Bacon. ' Rather that I would em- 
bezzle or deceive him of a mite, I would it were moult, and put into my mouth,' — 
Cavendish, Life of Cardinal Wolsey. 

36 



422 Of Gardens. [Essay xlvi: 

nestling, and that no foulness appear on the floor of the aviarj. 
So I have made a j)\atform of a princely garden, partly by pre- 
cept, partly by drawing — ^not a model, but some general lines 
of it — and in this I have spared^ for no cost ; but it is nothing 
for great princes, that, for the most part, taking advice with 
"workmen with no less cost set their things together, and some- 
times add statues, and such things, for state and magnificence, 
but nothing to the true pleasure of a garden. 



^ Spare. To restrict oneself; to forbear. 

' We might have spared our coming.' — Milton. 



ESSAY XLVII. OF NEGOTIATING. 

IT is generally better to deal by speech than by letter, and by 
the mediation of a third than by a man's self. Letters are 
good, when a man wonld draw an answer by letter back again, 
or when it may serve for a man's justification afterwards to 
produce his own letter ; or where it may be danger to be in- 
terrupted, or heard by pieces. To deal in person is good, when 
a man's face breedeth regard, as commonly with inferiore ; or 
in tender cases, where a man's eye upon the countenance of him 
with whom he speaketh may give him a direction how far to go ; 
and generally, where a man will reserve to himself liberty, 
either to disavow or expound. In choice of instruments, it is 
better to cliuse men of a plainer sort, that are like to do that 
that is committed to them, and to report back again faithfully 
the success, than those that are cunning' to contrive out of other 
men's business somewhat to grace themsqjves, and will help the 
matter in report, for satisfaction sake. Use also such persons 
as aflfect^ the business wherein they are employed, for that 
quickeneth much ; and such as ara fit for the matter, as bold 
men for expostulation, fair-spoken men for pei^suasion, crafty 
men for inquiry and observation, froward and absurd men for 
business that doth not well bear out itself. Use also such as 
liave been lucky, and prevailed before in things wherein you 
have employed them ; for that breeds confidence, and they will 
strive to maintain their prescription. 

It is better to sound a person wdth whom one deals, afar off, 
than to fall upon the point at first, except you mean to surprise 
him by some short question. It is better dealing with men 
in appetite,^ than with those that are where they would be. If 



* Cunning. Skilful. ' I will take away the cunning artificer.' — Isaiah iii. 3. 

' I will send you a man of mine 
Cunning in music and the mathematics.' — Shakcspere. 

* Affect. To like. See page 368. 

* Appetite. Desire. 

' Dexterity so obeying appetite. 
That what he wills, he does.' — Shakespere. 



424 Of Negotiating. [Essay xlvii. 

a man deal with another upon conditions, the start of first 
performance is all ; which a man cannot reasonably demand, 
except either the nature of the thing be such which must go 
before ; or else a man can pei'suade the other party, that he 
shall still need him in some other thing; or else that he be 
counted the honester man. All practice' is to discover, or to 
work. Men discover themselves in trust, in passion, at un- 
awares ; and of necessity, when they would have somewhat 
done, and cannot find an apt pretext. If you would work any 
man, you must either know his nature or fashions,' and so lead 
him ; or his ends, and so persuade him ; or his weakness and 
disadvantages, and so awe him ; or those that have interest in 
him, and so govern him. In dealing with cunning persons, we 
must ever consider their ends to interpret their speeches ; and 
it is good to say little to tliem, and that which they least look 
for. Li all negotiations of difficulty, a man may not look to 
sow and reap at once, but must prepare business, and so ripen 
it by degrees. 



ANNOTATIONS. 

« 

' It is generally better to deal hy sjpeecli than hy letter.^ 

It is a pity Bacon did not say more, though what he does 
say is very just — on the comparative reasons for discussing 
every matter orally, and in writing. Not that a set of rules 
could be devised for the employment of each, that should super- 
sede the need of cautious observation, and sagacious reflection ; 
for ' what art,' as he himself has observed ' can teach the suit- 



* Practice. Negotiation ; skilful management. ' He ought to have that by 
practice, which he could not by prayer.' — Sidney. Tlius, also, the verb: 
' I have practised with him, 
And found means to let the victor know, 
Tliat Syphax and Sempronius are his friends.' — Addison. 
' Fashion. Way ; manner ; habit. 

' Pluck Casca by the sleeve, 
And he will, after his ov^n fashion, tell you 
What hath proceeded.' — Shakespere. 



Essay xlvii.] Annotations. 425 

able employment of an art V ' Genius begins,' as some one else 
lias remarked, ' wliere rules end.' But well-framed rules— such 
as Bacon doubtless could have given us in this matter — instead 
of cramping genius, enable it to act more efficiently. 

One advantage which, in some cases, the speaker possesses 
over the writer is, that he can proceed exactly in the order 
wdiich he judges to be the best ; establisliing each point in suc- 
cession, and perhaps keeping out of sight the conclusion to 
which he is advancing, if it be one against which there exists a 
prejudice. For sometimes men will feel the force of strong 
arguments which they would not have listened to at all, if they 
had known at the outset to what they were ultimately leading. 
Tlius the lawyer, in the fable, is di-awn into giving a right 
decision as to the duty of the owner of an ox which had gored 
a neighbour's. Now, though you -may proceed in the same 
order in a letter or a book, you cannot — if it is all to be laid 
before the reader at once — prevent his looking first at the end, 
to see wdiat your ultimate design is. And then you may be 
discomfited, just as a well-drawn-up army might be, if attacked 
in the rear. 

Many writers of modern tales have guarded against this, and 
precluded their readers from forestalling the conclusion, by pub- 
lishing in successive numbers. Aiid an analogous advantage 
may sometimes be secured by writing two or more letters in 
succession, so as gradually to develop the arguments in their 
proper order. 

In oral discussion, quiehiess may give a man a great advan- 
tage over those who may, perhaps, surpass him in sound judg- 
ment, but who take more time to form their opinions, and to 
develop their reasons ; and, universally, speaking has an advan- 
tage overwriting when the arguments are plausible, but flimsy. 
There is a story of an Athenian, who had a speech written for 
him in a cause he w^as to plead, by a professional orator, and 
which he was to learn by heart. At the first reading, he was 
delighted with it ; but less at the second ; and at the third, it 
seemed to him quite worthless. He w^ent to the composer to 
complain ; who reminded him that the judges were only to hear 
it once. 

And hence, as has been justly remarked, the very early prac- 
tice of much public speaking, tends to cultivate, in the person 
36* 



426 Of Negotiating. [Essay xlvii. 

himself, a habit of readiness and fluency, at the expense of care.- 
ful investigation and accurate reasoning.* A work requiring 
these quahties^ — such as, for instance, a sound treatise on Poli- 
tical Economy — ' might better be expected,' says Mr, Macaulay, 
' from an apothecary in a country-town, or a minister in the 
Hebrides, than from a man who, from the age of twenty-one, 
had been a practised debater in public' 

For sound reasoning, on the other hand, when opposed to 
existing prejudices, writing has a corresponding .advantage over 
speaking. Some plausible, though insufhcient, objection to 
what has been urged, may at once start up, as soon as the 
argument meets the ear or the eye ; and in an oral discussion 
this may seem to have finally disposed of the matter, and the 
whole may pass away from the mind. But written words re- 
main, as it were, staring y/)u in the face, and are virtually re- 
peated over and over again each time of re-perusal. It must 
be a really satisfactory refutation that can set the mind quite at 
ease in this case. For this is the converse of the case of the 
speech above alluded to. Sound arguments appear stronger 
and stronger each time they are re-considered. 

Oral discussion has this advantage in favour of the disin- 
genuous and crafty — that something may be conveyed by the 
tone of voice, looks, and gestures, which cannot be accurately 
reported, or at least so as to be satisfactorily proved ; and thus 
contempt, or suspicion, or incredulity, or disapprobation, &c., 
may be so conveyed as not to commit a man. And even words 
actually spoken may be denied ; or some (alleged) explanation 
of them may be added ; and it will be difficult to bring home 
to a man conclusively what he did, or did not, say, because few 
witnesses will be prepared to make oath as to the very words 
spoken. What is written, on the other hand, is a standing wit- 
ness, and cannot be so easily explained away. 

There is this difference again between speaking and writing; 
that there is no use in saying anything, however reasonable and 
forcible, which you are sure will have no weight with the persons 
you are speaking to. For there are persons whom to attempt 
to convince by even the strongest reasons, and most cogent 



' Oral translation from a foreign language, it is remarked by Dr. Arnold, gives 
fluency of speech without carelessness of thought 



Essay xlvii.] Annotations. 42T 

arguments, is like King Lear putting a letter before a man 
without eyes, and saying, 'Mark but the penning of it!' to 
which he answers, ' Were all the letters suns, I could not see 
one.' But it may be well worth while sometimes to wy'ite to 
such a person much that is not likely to influence him at all, 
if you have an opportunity of showing it to others, as a proof 
that he ought to have been convinced by it. 

As for speeches in public, they may be considered as par- 
taking of both characters ; for, as they are taken down by the 
reporters, and printed, they are, so far, of the character of 
written compositions. 

Bacon remarks in his Essay on ' Cunning,' that when there 
are two persons only conferring together, it is impossible to 
make it clear which of them said what. H either of them is 
trying to lack out of something he has said, or practising any 
other kind of craft, he will be likely to say, ' I understood you 
to say so and so.' ' You misunderstand me. I did not say so and 
so.' And when both parties are honest, there will be some- 
times a real misaj^prehension of what passed orally ; which is 
so frequent a cause of quarrels, that the very word ' misunder- 
standing' has come to be used in that sense. 

It is to be observed that when the expressions in dispute are 
not merely .what lawyers call ' obiter dicta' — something hastily 
and incidentally thrown out, — but contain the very drift and 
general tenor of a full and leisurely discussion of some matter, 
it is much more likely — other things being equal — that A. 
should have forgotten what he said, than that B. should 
have imagined what never took place. Yet there are 
some persons who, without any disingenuous design, but 
merely from a groundless confidence in the infallibility of 
their own memory, will insist on it that another has totally 
mistaken the whole drift of their discourse, and that they 
never said anything at all like what he distinctly remembers — 
though it is what he closely attended to — and what made a 
strong impression on his mind. Li such a case, he might fairly 
reply, ' Well, it cannot be denied to be possible that one man 
may mistake another,, to any extent, and under any cii"^' 
stances ; but if this is the case with me, there is no i 
your speaking to me at all, now, or at any time. For if I 
unable to understand aright the general drift of a dist 



428 Of Negotiating. [Essay xlvii. 

sion, in pltiin English, and to which I paid the closest atten- 
tion, how can I be sure that the sense I understand your words 
to convey at this very moment^ may not be something quite as 
diflerent from your real meaning, as that which I formerly 
understood you to say ? There must be an end therefore of all 
oral conference between us. Anything that you wish to com- 
municate, you must put down on paper, and let me, on reading 
it, express, on paper also, in my own words, what it is that I 
understand from it ; and then, these must be shown to one or 
two other persons, who must declare whether I have rightly 
understood you or not ; and must explain my mistake if I have 
made any.' 

For people who are slippery, either from design or from 
treacherous memory, there is nothing like writing. 

But it may be remarked generally, that a person who is apt 
to complain of ' not being understood,' even by such as possess 
ordinary intelligence and candour, is one who does not well 
understand himself. 

A remark of Dr. Cooke Taylor, in The Bishoj), bears upon 
this subject: — 'Much judgment is required to discriminate 
between the occasions when business can be best done per-- 
sonally, and when best by letter. One general rule may be 
noted, — disagreements will be hQ'&t prevented by oral communi- 
cations, for then each man may throw out what occurs to him, 
without being committed in writing to something from which 
lie M-ould be ashamed to draw back. There is' room for mutual 
explanation — for softening down harsh expressions — for coming 
to an understanding about common objects, which very probably 
are not inconsistent so long as the elements of discord retain 
the vagueness of spoken words. Litcra scripta manet. 

' When, however, disagreements actually exist, the opposite 
couree must be pursued ; in such a case conversation has an 
inevitable tendency to become debate ; and in the heat of argu- 
ment something is likely to be thrown out offensive to one 
side or the other. Adversaries generally meet, not to end a 
dispute, but to continue it ; not to eifect reconciliation, but to 
gain a victory ; they are, therefore, likely to remember dif- 
ferently what is said, to put very varied interpretations on tones 
and looks, and to find fr^sh aliment of strife in the means em- 



Essay xlvii.] Annotations. 429" ■ 

ployed for its termination. Even wlien adversaries meet for the 
express purpose of being reconciled, tliey are very apt to slide 
insensibly into the opposite course, and thus to widen the breach 
which you are anxious to have closed. It would be an odd way 
of preventing a light between game cocks to bring them into 
the same pit.' 

It is important to observe, that where there are a number 
of persons possessed with some strong prejudices which you 
wish to break down, you have a much better chance by dealing 
with them one by one, than together ; because they keep each 
other in countenance in holding out against strong reasons ta 
which they can find no answer; and are ashamed — each in 
presence of the rest — to go back from what they have said, and 
own conviction. 

And again, if you wish to make the most of your station and 
character, so as to overbear superior i-easons on the other side, 
do not bring them together, lest some of them should press you 
with arguments or objections which you cannot answer, and the 
rest should be ashamed to decide, through mere deference to 
you, against what each feels must be the general conviction ; 
but if you take them one by one, each will probably be ashamed 
of setting up himself singly against you ; you will be likely to 
prevail at least with each one who cannot himself refute you ; 
and these will probably be the majority.* 

But, on the other hand, if there are some prevailing prejudices 
that are on your side, and cool argument would weigh against you, 
then, according to what has been said just above, you can more 
easily manage a number of men together, than each singly. 

It is told of the celebrated Wilkes, that at some public meet- 
ing he sat next to a person who, being ill-pleased with the course 
matters were taking, kept exclaiming, ' I cannot allow this to 



^ Some Reviewer, if I recollect rightly, takes for granted that I am here de- 
scribing my own practice. On the same principle he would, one may suppose, if 
he heard of some anatomist, who had pointed out the situation of the vital parts 
of the human frame, where a wound was likely to prove mortal, conclude that 
the man must be an assassin 1 

It is not perhaps wonderful that a person of low moral principle should infer — 
judging from himself — that one who knows of some crafty trick will be sure to 
practise it. But any one of even a moderate degree of acuteness, will perceive 
that a person who does practise such tricks, is not very likely to publish a descrip- 
tion of them. Burglars do not send word to the master of a house at what point 
they design to break in. 



430 Of Negotiating. [Essay xlvil. 

go on ! I must take the sense of tlie Meeting on tliis point.' 
Whereupon Wilkes is said to have whispered to him, ' Do so, if 
you will ; I'll take the nonsense of the meeting against you, 
and beat you.' 

In dcalhig with those who have prejudices to be got over, 
and whose co-operation or conviction you wish for, it is well 
worth remembering that there are two opposite kinds of dispo- 
sition in men, requiring opposite treatment. One man, perhaps 
intelligent, and not destitute of candour, but with a consider- 
able share of what phrenologists call the organs of firmness, 
and of combativeness, will set himself to find objections to your 
proposals or views ; and the more you urge him to come to an 
immediate decision on your side, and own himself overcome by 
your arguments, the more resolutely he will maintain his first 
position, and will at length commit himself irrevocably to op- 
position. Your wisest coui-se, therefore, with such a man will 
be, after having laid before him your reasons, to recommend 
him to reflect calmly on them, and so leave him to consult his 
pillow. And it will often happen that he will reason himself 
into your views. Leave the arrow sticking in his prejudice, 
and it will gradually bleed to death. 

With another man, of a very different character, it will be 
wise to pursue an opposite course. If you urge him with the 
strongest reasons, and answer all his objections, and then leave 
him apparently a convert, you will find the next time you meet 
him, that you have all to do over again ; everything that you 
had said having faded away. Your only security with such a 
man, is to continue pressing him, till he has distinctly given his 
consent, or plainly declared his acquiescence ; — till you have 
brought him, as it were, formally to pass the Act in the Parlia- 
ment of his own mind, and committed himself in your favour. 

Of course, you must w\atch for any symptoms that may in- 
dicate which kind of man you have to deal with. 

Another caution to be observed is, that in combating, whether 
as a speaker or a writer, deep-rooted prejudices, and maintain- 
ing unpopular truths, the point to be aimed at should be, to 
adduce what is sufficient, and not much more than is sufficient 
to prove your conclusion. If you can but satisfy men that 



Essay xlvii.] Aniiotat'wns. 431 

your opinion is decidedly more probable than the opposite, you 
will have carried your point more eiiectually than if you go on, 
much beyond this, to demonstrate, by a multitude of the most 
forcible arguments, the extreme ahsurdity of thinking difterently, 
till you have aifronted the self-esteem of some, and awakened 
the distrust of others. ' Some will be stung by a feeling of 
shame passing off into resentment, which stops their ears 
against argument. They could have borne perhaps to change 
their opinion : but not, so to change it as to tax their former 
opinion with the grossest folly. They would be so sorry to 
thinJc they had been blinded to such an excess, and are so 
angry with him who is endeavouring to persuade them to think 
so, that these feelings determine them not to think it. They 
try (and it is an attempt which few persons ever make in vain) 
to shut their eyes against an humiliating conviction : and thus, 
the very triumphant force of the reasoning adduced, serves to 
harden them against admitting the conclusion : much as one 
may conceive Roman soldiers desperately holding out an un- 
tenable fortress to the last extremity, from apprehension of 
being made to pass under the yoke by the victors, should they 
surrender. 

' Others again, perhaps comparatively strangers to the ques- 
tion, and not prejudiced, or not strongly prejudiced, against 
your conclusion, but ready to admit it if supported by suffi- 
cient arguments, will sometimes, if your arguments are very 
much heyond what is sufficient, have their suspicions roused by 
this very circumstance. ' Can it be possible,' they will say, 
' that a conclusion so very obvious as this is made to appear, 
should not have been admitted long ago? Is it conceivable 
that such and such eminent philosophers, divines, statesmen, &c. 
should have been all their lives under delusions so gross?' 
Hence they are apt to infer, either that the author has mis- 
taken the opinions of those he imagines opposed to him, or 
else, that there is some subtle fallacy in his arguments." 

This is a distrust that reminds one of the story related by a 
French writer, M. Say, of some one who, for a wager, stood a 
whole day on one of the bridges of Paris, offering to sell a five- 
franc piece for one franc, and (naturally) not finding a purchaser. 



Elements of Rhetoric, Part I., ch. iil, § 



432 Of Negotiating. [Essay xlvii. 

In this way, the very clearness and force of the demonstration 
will, with some minds, have an opposite tendency to the one 
desired. Labourers who are employed in drwing wedges into a 
block of wood, are careful to use blows of no greater force 
than is just sufficient. If they strike too hard, the elasticity 
of the wood will throw out the wedge. 

It may be noticed here that the effect produced by any 
writing or speech of an argumentative character, on any sub- 
jects on which diversity of opinion prevails, may be compared — 
supposing the argument to be of any weight — to the effects of a 
fire-engine on a conflagration. That portion of the water which 
falls on solid stone walls, is poured out where it is not needed. 
That, again, which falls on blazing beams and rafters, is cast off in 
volumes of hissing steam, and will seldom avail to quench the fire. 
But that which is poured on wood-work that is just beginning to 
kindle, may stop the burning ; and that which wets the rafters 
not yet ignited, but in danger, may save them from catching 
fire. Even so, those who already concur with the writer as to 
some point, will feel gratified with, and perhaps bestow high 
commendation on an able defence of the opinions they already 
held ; and those, again, who have fully made up their minds on 
the opposite side, are more likely to be displeased than to be 
convinced. But both of these parties are left nearly in the 
same mind as before. Those, however, who are in a hesitating 
and doubtful state, may very likely be decided by forcible argu- 
ments. And those who have not hitherto considered the subject, 
may be induced to adopt opinions which they find supported by 
the strongest reasons. But the readiest and warmest approba- 
tion a writer meets with, will usually be from those whom he 
has not convinced, because they were convinced already. And 
the effect the most important and the most difficult to be pro- 
duced, he will usually, when he does produce it, hear the least 
of. Tliose whom he may have induced to reconsider, and gra- 
dually to alter, previously fixed opinions, are not likely, for a 
time at least, to be very forward in proclaiming the change. 

One of the most troublesome kind of persons to deal with, in 
any kind of negotiation, is a caviller. Of these, some are such 
from insidious design, and some from intellectual deficiency. A 
caviller is on the look out for objections, valid or invalid, to 



Essay xlvii.] Annotatiojis. 433 

everything that is proposed, or done, or said ; and will seldom 
fail to find some. No power, no liberty, can be entrusted to any 
one, which may not, possibly or conceivably, be abused ; and 
the caviller takes for granted that it always will be abused ; — 
that everything that is left to any one's discretion, must be left 
to his widiscretion ; — and that, in short, no one will ever be re- 
strained from doing any thing that he may do, by a sense of 
honour, or by common prudence, or by regard for character. 

It would be easy for such a man to prove, d jpriori^ that it is 
impossible for such a s;f stem as the British Constitution to work 
well, or to continue to subsist at all. The king may put his 
veto on a Bill which has passed both Houses ; and when this is 
done, the Public will refuse supplies ; and so, the government 
must come to a dead lock. Or, the King may create a great 
batch of Peers, and bribe a majority of the Commons, and so 
make himself absolute. Or again, the King may pardon aU 
criminals, and thus nullify the administration of justice. Or 
again, he may appoint to all the Bishopricks, and to a great 
number of livings, men of Socinian or Eomisli tendencies, who 
will explain away all our formularies, and wholly subvert the 
system of our Church. 

Tlie institution of an order of persons called Parochial Visi- 
tors, having the office of assisting and acting under the Minister 
of each parish, and serving as a medium of communication be- 
tween him and the parishioners, and standing in a relation to 
each, analogous to that of the attendants in an hospital towards 
the physician and tlie patients — this has been assailed in a 
similar way by cavillers. ' Are these Visitors,' it was said, ' to , 
have the cure of souls ? Are they to expound Scripture to the 
people, and give them religious instruction and admonition, just 
as the pastor does ? K so, they ought to be regularly ordained 
clergymen ; and should be called curates. Or, are they merely 
to be the bearers of communications between the people and the 
pastor, and not to venture, without his express orders, to read 
a j)assage of Scripture to a sick man, or to explain to him the 
meaning of such words as ' Publican' or ' Pharisee ?' In that 
case they will fall into contempt as triflers.' 

If you answer that they are not to be so rigidly restricted as 
that ; but are to reserve for the Minister any important or diffi- 
cult points ; the caviller will reply — ' And who is to be 

37 EE 



434 Of Negotiating. [Essaj xlvii. 

what are the most imjDortant and difficult points, and what 
the easier and more obvious. If this is to be left to the discre- 
tion of the Yisitor himself, he will take everything into his 
own hands ; but if it is to be referred to the Minister, then, the 
Visitor will be nothing but a mere messenger.' In like manner 
it might be asked, whether the nurse in an hospital is to admi- 
nister or withhold medicines, and perform surgical operations, 
at discretion, and in short, to usurp all the functions of the 
physician, or whether she is not to be allowed to smooth a 
patient's pillow, or moisten his lips, or wfpe his brow, without a 
written order from the doctor. 

The Israelites in the Wilderness were perverse enough, no 
doubt ; but if there had been cavillers among them, it would 
have been easy to find plausible objections to the appointment 
by Moses of the seventy Elders, who were to decide all small 
matters, and to reserve the weightier ones for him. ' Who is 
to be the judge,' it might have been said, — ' which are the 
weightier causes ? If, the Elders themselves, then they may 
keep all matters in their own hands, and leave no jurisdiction 
at all in Moses : but if he is to be consulted on each point, he 
will not be saved any trouble at all ; because every case will 
have to be laid before him.' 

Nevertheless the plan did seem on the whole to work well ; 
and so it was found, in practice, with the institution of Parochial 
Visitors ; and so, with the British Constitution. 

One course generally adopted by the caviller, with respect to 
any proposal that is brought forward, is, if it be made in general 
terms, to call for detailed j>a/rticidars, and to say, ' explain dis- 
tinctly what kind of regulations you wish for, and what are the 
changes you think needful, and who are the persons to whom 
you would entrust the management of the matter,' &c. If again, 
any of these details are given, it will be easy to find some 
plausible objection to one or more of these, and to join issue on 
that point, as involving the whole question. Sancho Panza's 
Baratarian physician did not at once lay down the decision that 
his patient was to have no dinner at all ; but only objected to 
each separate dish to which he was disposed to help himself. 

Tlie only way to meet a caviller is to expose the whole system 
of cavilling, and say, ' if I had proposed so and so, you would 
have had your cavil ready ; just as you have now.' 



xlvii.] Annotations. '4;Z5 

But in proposing any sclieme, the best way is, to guard, in 
tlie first instance, against cavils on details, and establish, first 
that some thing of such and such a character is desirable ; then 
proceeding to settle each of the particular points of detail, one 
by one. And this is the ordinary course of experienced men ; 
who, as it were, cut a measure into mouthfuls, that it may be 
the more readily swallowed ; dividing the whole measure into a 
series of resolutions ; each of which will perhaps pass by a large 
majority, though the whole at once, if proposed at once as a 
whole, might have been rejected. For supposing it to consist 
of four clauses, A, B, C, and D ; if out of an assembly of one 
hundred persons, twenty are opposed to clause A, and eighty 
in favour of it, and the like with B, and with C, and D, then, 
if the whole were put to the vote at once, there would be a 
majority of eighty to twenty against it: whereas, if divided, 
there would be that majority in favour of it. 

It is fairly to be required, however, that a man should 
really have — though he may not think it wise to jproduce it 
in the first instance — some definite plan for carrying into efifect 
whatever he proposes. Else, he may be one of another class of 
pei-sons as difficult to negotiate with, and as likely to baffle any 
measure as the preceding. There are some, and not a few, 
who cast scorn on any sober practical scheme by drawing bright 
pictures of a Utopia which can never be realized, either from 
their having more of imagination than judgment, or from a 
deliberate design to put one out of conceit with everything that 
is practicable, in order that nothing may be done. 

E. g. ' What is wanted, is, not this and that improvement in 
the mode of electing Members of Parliament, — but a Parliament 
consisting of truly honest, enlightened, and patriotic men. It 
is vain to talk of any system of Church-government, or of 
improved Church-discipline, or any alterations in our Services, 
or revision of the Bible-translation ; what we vmnt is a zealous 
and truly evangelical ministry, who shall assiduously inculcate on 
all the people pure Gospel doctrine. It is vain to cast cannon 
and to raise troops ; what is wanted, for the successful conduct of 
the war, is an army of well-equipped and well-disciplined men, 
under the command of generals who are thoroughly masters of 
the art of war,' &c. And thus one may, in every department 
of life, go on indefinitely making fine speeches that can lead to 



4:36 Of Negotiating. [Essay xlvii. 

no practical resnlt, except to create a disgust for ev^erytliing that 
is practical. ~ " - *. 

"When, (in 1832,) public attention was called to tlie enormous 
mischiefs arising from the system of Transportation, we were' 
told in reply, in a style of florid and indignant declamation, th^t 
the real cause of all the enormities complained of, was, a ' want 
of sufficient fear of God ; (I) and that the only remedy wanted 
was, an increased fear of God ! As if, when the unhealthiness 
of some locality had been pointed out, and a suggestion had 
been thrown out for providing sewers, and draining marshes, 
it had been replied that the root of the evil was, a prevailing 
want of health ; — that it was strange, this — ^the true cause — • 
should have been overlooked ; — and that the remedy of all 
would be to provide restored health ! 

As for the penal colonies, all that is required to make them 
efficient, is, we must suppose, to bring in a Bill enacting that 
* Whereas, &c., be it therefore enacted, that from and after the 
first of January next ensuing, all persons shall fear God !' 

It is such Utopian declaimei*s that give plausibility to the 
objections of the cavillers above noticed. 

It is but fair, after one has admitted (supposing it is what 
ought to be admitted) the desirableness of the end proposed, to 
call on the other party to say whether he knows, or can think 
of, any means by which that end can be attained. 



ESSA¥ XLVm. OF FOLLOWERS AND 
FKIENDSr 

COSTLY followers are not to be liked, lest, while a man 
maketk his train longer, he make his wings shorter. I 
reckon to he costly, not them alone which charge tlie purse, but 
which are wearisome and importune' in suits. Ordinary fol- 
lowers ought to challenge no higher conditions than countenance, 
recommendation, and protection from wrongs. Factious fol- 
lowers are worse to be liked, which follow not upon' affection 
to him with whom they range themselves, but upon discontent- 
ment conceived against some other; whereupon commonly 
ensueth that ill intelligence' that we many times see between 
great pei-sonages. Likewise glorious' followers, who make 
tliemselves as trumpets of the commendation of those they 
follow, are full of inconvenience, for they taint business through 
v/ant of secrecy ; and they export honour from a man, and make 
him a return in envy. Tliere is a kind of follower, likewise, 
which are dangerous, being indeed espials,' which inquire the 
eecrets of the house, and bear tales of them to others ; yet such 
men many times are in great favour, for they are officious,' and 
commonly exchange tales. The following by certain estates* of 



' Importune. Importunate. 

- More shall thy penyt«nt sighs, his endlesse mercy please ; 
Than their imporiwie suits which dreame that wordes God's wrathe appease.' 

— Surrey. 

* Upon. In consequence of. 'Upon pity they were taken away; upon igno- 
rance they were again demanded.' — Hayioard. 

' Discontentment. Discotitent ' Tell of your enemies, and discontentments:— 
State Trials, 1600. 

* 111 intelUgenca Bad terms: He lived rather in a fair intelligence, than in 
any friendship with the favourites.' — Clarendon. 

^ Glorious. Boastful. 

' We have not 
Received into our bosom, and our grace, 
A glorious lazy drone.' — Massinger. 

* Espials. Spials ; spies. See page 409. 

* Officious. Useful ; doing good offices. 

' Yet, not to earth are those bright luminaries 
• Officious ; but to thee, earth's inhabitant.'— J/i/<on. 

* Estates of men. Orders of men. See page 18Y. 

37* 



438 Of Folloicers and Friends. [Essay xlviii. 

men, answerable to tliat wliicli a great man himself professetli 
(as of soldiers to him that hath been employed in the wars, and 
the like), hath ever been a thing civil,' and well taken even in 
monarchies, so it be without too mnch pomp or popularity : but 
the most honourable kind of following is to be followed as one 
that apprehendeth" to advance virtue and desert in all sorts of 
persons ; and yet, where there is no eminent odds in sujSiciency,' 
it is better to take with the more passable than with the more 
able : and, besides, to speak truth in base times, active men are 
of more use than virtuous. It is true, that in government it is 
good to use men of one rank equally ; for to countenance some 
extraordinarily is to make them insolent, and the rest discontent,* 
because they may claim a due ; but contrariwise in favour, to 
use men with much difference' and election, is good ; for it 
maketh the persons preferred more thankful, and the rest more 
officious ; because all is of favour. It is good discretion not to 
make too much of any man at the first, because one cannot 
hold out that proportion. To be governed (as w^e call it), by 
one, is not safe, for it shows softness," and gives a freedom to 
scandal and disreputation ;' for those that would not censure or 
speak ill of a man immediately, will talk more boldly of those 
that are so great with them, and thereby w^ound their honour ; 
yet to be distracted wdth many, is worse, for it makes men to 
be of the last impression, and full of change. To take advice 



' Civil. Decorous. ' Wliere civil speech and soft persuasioa ii«ng.' — Fope, 

* Apprehend. 7b eonceive ; to fake in as an object. 

' Can we want obedience, then. 
To Him, or possibly his love desert, 
"Who form'd us from the dust, and placed us here. 
Full to the utmost measuFe of what bliss 
Human desires can seek, or apprehend? — Milton. 
' Sufficiency. Ability. See page 252. 

* Discontent. Discontented. 'Tlie discountenanced and discontent, these the 
Earl singles out, as best for his purpose.' — Hayward. 

^ Diiference. Dvitinciion. ' Our constitution does not only make a difference 
between the guilty and the innocent, but even among the guilty, between s-ueh as 
are more or less observed.' — Addison. 

* Softness. Weakness. 

' Under a shepherd sofle and negligent. 
The wolfe hath many a sheep and lambe to rent.' — Chaucer. 
' Disreputation. Disrepute. ' Gluttony is not in such dtsreputathn among 
men as dininkenness.' — Bishop Taylor. 



Essay xlviii.] Annotations. 439 

of some few friends, is ever honourable ; for lookers-on many 
times see more tlian gamesters ; and the vale best discovereth 
the hilL There is little friendship in the world, and least of 
all between equals, which was wonf to be magnified. That 
that is, is between superior and inferior, whose fortunes may 
comprehend the one the other. 



ANNOTATIONS. 

* They taint lusiness through want of secrecy.'' 

Henry Taylor, in the Statesman^ has a good remark on the 
advantage ot trusting thoroughly rather than pariially. For 
there are some Avho will be more likely to betray one secret, if 
one only is confided, than if they felt themselves confidants 
altogether. They will then, he thinks, be less likely to give a 
boastful proof of the confidence reposed in them, by betray- 
ing it 

' A hind of followers which hear tales.'' 

It is observable that flatterers are usually tale-bearers. Thus 
we have in Provefos the caution, ' He that goeth about as a 
tale-bearer, revealeth secrets ; therefore meddle not with hira 
that flattereth with his lips.' 

*■ Loohers-on many times see more than gamesters.'' 

This proverbial maxim, which bears witness to the advantage 
sometimes possessed by an observant by-stander over those 
actually engaged in any transaction, has a parallel in an Irish 
proverb : 

)X ^]^)'^ ^1) -cjoitidij^T^e 4t) xe X)]ox -dit 4t) 3clo;-66. 

He is a good liurler that's on the ditch. 



Wont Accustomed. See page 408. 



440 Of Followers and Friends. [Essay xlviii. 

' To countenance some extraordinavily is to malce them insolent.'' 

Men very often raise up some troublesome persons into 
importance, and afterwards try in vain to get rid of them. So 
also, they give encouragement to some dangerous principle or 
practice, in order to serve a present purpose, and then find it 
turned against themselves. The horse in the fable, who seek- 
ing aid against his enemy, the stag, had allowed an insidious 
ally to mount, and to put his bit into his mouth, found it after- 
wards no easy matter to unseat him. Thus, too, according to 
the proverb, the little birds, which are chasing about the full- 
grown cuekoo, had themselves reared it as a nestling. 

The Spring -was come, and the nest was made. 

And the little bird all her eggs had laid. 

When a cuckoo capie to the door to beg 

She would kindly adopt another egg ; 

For I have not leisure, upon my word. 

To attend to such things, said the roving bird. 

There was hardly room for them all in the nest. 

But the egg was admitted along with the rest ; 

And the foster-birds play'd their part so well, 

That soon the young cv;ckoo had chipp'd the shell: 

For the silly birds! they could not see 

That their foster-chick their plague would be ; 

And so big and saucy the cuckoo grew, 

That no peace at last in the nest they knew. 

He peck'd and he hustled the old birds about ; 

And as for the young ones, he jostled them out. 

Till at length they summoned their friends to their aid. 

Wren, robin, and sparrow, not one delay'd, 

And joining together, neighbour with neighbour. 

They drove out the cnckoo with infinite labour. 

But the cuckoo was iledged, and laughed to see 

How they vainly chased him from tree to tree : 

They had nursed him so well, he was grown the stronger. 

And now he needed their help no longer. 

Give place, or power, or trust, to none 
Who will make an ill use of what they have won. 
For when you have rear'd the cuckoo-guest, 
'Twill be hard to drive him out of the nest ; 
And harder still, when away he's flown, 
• To hunt down the cuckoo now fully grown.' 



' From a periodical called The Ti-ue Britoru 



ESSAY XLIX. OF SUITORS. 

MANY ill matters and projects are undertaken, and private 
suits do putrefy the public good. Many good matters are 
undertaken with bad minds — I mean not only corrupt minds, 
but crafty minds, that intend not performance. Some embrace 
suits, which never mean to deal effectually in them ; but if they 
*e there may be life in the matter, by some other mean,' they 
wdl be content to win a thank,^ or take a second^ reward, or, at 
least, to make use in the meantime of the suitor's hopes. Some 
take hold of suits only for an occasion to cross some other, or 
to make* an information, whereof they could not otherwise have 
apt pretext, without care what become of the suit wdien the 
turn is served ; or, generally, to make other men's business a 
kind of entertainment* to bring in their own ; nay, some under- 
take suits with a full purpose to let them fall, to the end to 
gratify the adverse party, or competitor. Surely there is in 
some sort a right in every suit : either a right of equity, if it be 
a suit of controversy, or a right of desert, if it be a suit of 
petition. If affection lead a man to favour the wrong side in 
justice, let him rather use his countenance to compound the 
matter than to carry it. If affection lead a man to favour the 
less worthy in desert, let him do it without depraving' or dis- 
abling the better deserver. In suits which a man doth not 
well understand, it is ffood to refer them to some friend of trust 



^ Mean. Means. See page 185. 

' A thank. Seldom used in (he singular. ' The fool saith I have no thanJc for 
all my good deed ; and they that eat my bread speak evil of me.' — JEcclns. xx. 16. 
' Second. Secondary ; inferior. 

' Each glance, each grace, 
' Keep their first lustre and maintain their place, 
Not second yet to any other face.' — Dryden. 
*■ Make. Oive. ' They all with one consent began to make excuse.' — LvJce 
xiv. 18. 

* Entertainment.' Preliminary cmnmunication. ' Tlie queen desires you to use 
some gentle entertainment to Laertes, before you fall to play.' — Shakespere. 

' Deprave. To vilify. ' And that knoweth conscience, ich cam nogt to chide 
ne to deprave the personne.' — Piers Ploughman. ' Envy is blind, and can do 
nothing but deprave and speak ill of virtuous doing.' — Bennett. 



442 Of Suitors. [Essay xlix. 

and judgment, that may report wlietlier he may deal in them 
with honour ; but let him chuse well his referendaries/ for else 
he may be led by the nose. Suitors are so distasted* with 
delays, and abuses/ that plain dealing in denying to deal in 
suits at first, and reporting the success barely, and in chal- 
lenging no moi'e thanks than one hath deserved, is grown not 
only honourable, but also gracious. In suits of favour, the 
first coming ought to take little place ;* so far forth' considera- 
tion may be had of his trust, that if intelligence of the matter 
could not otherwise have been had but by him, advantage be 
not taken of the note,° but the party left to his other mea^j^ 
and in some sort recompensed for his discovery. To be ignorant 
of the value of a suit is simplicity, as well as to be ignorant of 
the right thereof is want of conscience. Secrecy in suits is a 
great mean of obtaining ; for voicing' them to be in forwardness 
may discourage some kind of suitors, but doth quicken' and 
awake others ; but timing of the suit is the principal — timing, 
I say, not only in respect of the person who should grant it, 
but in respect of those which are like to cross it. Let a man, 
in the choice of his mean," rather chuse the fittest mean than 
the greatest mean ; and rather them that deal in certain things, 

' Referendaries. Referees. ' Who was legate at the dooings, who was 
referendarie, who was presidente, who was presente.' — Bishop Jewell. 

* Distaste. To disgust. ' These new edicts, that so distaste the people.' — Heywood. 
^ Abuses. Deception. 

' Lend me your kind pains to find out this abuse.' — Shakespere. 

* Place. IJfect. 

' Yet these fix'd evils sit so fit in him, 
That thej' take place, when virtue's steely bones 
Look bleak in the cold wind.' — Shakespere. 
^ So far forth. 7o the degree. ' The substance of the seiwice of God, so far forth 
as it hath in it anj-thing more than the love of reason doth teach, must not be in- 
vented of man, but received from God himself — Hooker. 
'Arraied for this feste, in every wise 
So far forth as his connynge may suffice.' — Chaucer. 
® Note, notification ; information. 

' She that from Naples 
Can have no note, unless the sun were past, 
(The man i' the moon's too slow).' — Shakespere. 
' Voice. To report. ' It was voiced that the king purposed to put to death Ed- 
ward Plantagenet.' — Shakespere. 

^ Quicken. To bring to life. See page 392. 

* Mean. Instrument. ' Pamela's noble heart would needs gratefully make 
known the valiant mean of her safety.' — Sidney. 



Essay xlix.] Of Suitors. 443 

than those that are general. The reparation of a denial is 
sometimes equal to the first grant, if a man show himself 
neither dejected nor discontented. ' Iniqnum petas, ut seqnum 
feras" is a good rule where a man hath strength of favour ; but 
otherwise, a man were better rise in liis suit, for he that would 
have ventured at first to have losf' the suitor, will not, in the 
conclusion, lose both the suitor and his own former favour. 
Nothing is thought so easy a request to a great person, as his 
letter ; and yet, if it be not in a good cause, it is so much out 
of his reputation. There are no worse instruments than these 
gefieral contrivers of suits, for they are but a kind of poison 
and infection to public proceedings. 



'Ask for what is unjust, in order that thou mayest obtain what is just.' 
Lost. Jiuitied. 

' Therefore mark my counsel 
.... or both yourself and me 
'" 'nst.' — Shakespere. 



ESSAY L. OF STUDIES. 

OTUDIES serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. 
^ Their chief use for delight is in privateness,' and retiring ; 
for ornament, is in discourse ; and for ability, is in the judgment 
and disposition of business ; for, expert men can execute, and 
perhaps judge of particulars, one by one ; but the general 
counsels, and the plots and marshalling of affairs, come best 
from those that are learned.^ To spend too much time in 
studies, is sloth ; to use them too much for ornament, is affecta- 
tion; to make" judgment wholly by their rules, is the humour 
of a scholar ; they perfect nature, and are perfected by expe- 
rience — for natural abilities are like natural plants, that need 
pruning by study ; and studies themselves do give forth direc- 
tions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience. ) 
Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise 
men use them, for they teach not their own use ; but that is a 
wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation. 
Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for 
granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and con- 
sider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, 
and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books 
are to be read only in parts ; others to be read, but not 
curiously ;^ and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence 
and attention. Some books also may be read by deputy, and 
extracts made of them by others ; but that woukr be only in 
the less important arguments, and the meaner sort of books ; 
else distilled books are, like common distilled waters, flashy 
things, . Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, 
and writing an exact man ; and, therefore, if a man write little, 
he had need have a great memory ; if he confer little, he had 
need have a present wit ; and if he read little, he had need have 



* Privateness. Privac;/. See page 92. ^ Make. Give. See page 441. 

* Curiously. Attentively. ' At first I thought there had been no light reflected 
from the water ; but observing it more curiotisly, I saw within it several spots 
which appeared darker than the rest.' — Sir Isaac Newton. 

* Would. Shoidd. See page 307. 



Essay 1.] Of Studies. 445 

mucli cunning, to seem to know that* lie doth not. Histories 
make men wise ; poets witty ; the mathematics subtle ; natural 
philosophy deep ; moral, grave ; logic and rhetoric, able to 
contend : ' Abeunt studia in mores" — nay, there is no stond' or 
impediment in the wit, but may be wrought^ out by fit studies, 
like as diseases of the body may have appropriate exercises — 
bowling is good for the stone and reins,^ shooting for the lungs 
and breast, gentle walking for the stomach, riding for the head, 
and the like ; so, if a man's wits be wandering, let him study 
the mathematics, for in demonstrations, if his wit be called 
away never so little, he must begin again ; if his wit be not apt 
to distinguish or find differences,* let him study the schoolmen, 
for they are ' cymini sectores ;" if he be not apt to beat over 
matters, and to call upon one thing to p'rove and illustrate 
another, let him study the lawyers' cases — so every defect of 
the mind may have a special receipt. 

ANTITHETA ON STUDIES. 

Pro. Contra. 

'Lectio est conversatio cum pruden- 'Qua? niiqnam ars docnit tempesti- 

tibus ; actio fere cum stultis. Tum artis usum ? 

' In reading, lue hold converse with the ' What art has ever taught us the 

wise ; in the business of life, generally suitable use of an art ? 

with the foolish.' . . . . 

' Artis sjepissime ineptus usus est, ne 

' Non inutiles scientije existimandse sit nullus. 
sunt, quarum in se nullus est usus, si ' ^ branch of knowledge is often jmt 

ingenia acuant, et ordinent. to an improper use, for fear of its being 

' We should not consider even those idle.' 
sciences which have no actual practical 
application in themselves, as without 
value, if they sharpen and train the 
intellect.' 



> That. What. See page 64. 

' ' Manners are influenced by studies.' 

^ Stond. Hindrances. See page 385. 

* Wrought. Worked. ' Wlio, through faith, wrought righteousness.' — Heb. xi. 33. 
' How great is Thy goodness, which TIiou hast wrought for them that trust in 

Thee ['—Psalm xxxi. 19. 

' Reins. Kidneys ; inviard parts. ' Whom I shall see for myself, though my 
reins be consumed within me.' — Job xix. 27. 

* Differences. Distinctions. See page 438. 

' ' Splitters of cummin.' Vid. A. L. I. vii. Y. 

38 



446 Of Studies. [Essay 1. 

ANNOTATIONS. 

' Crafty men wnteinn studies.'' 

This contempt, whetlier of crafty men or narrow-minded men, 
often finds its expression in the word 'smattering;' and the 
couplet is become ahnost a proverb, 

' A little learning is a dangerous thing, 
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.' 

But the poet's remedies for the dangers of a little learning are 
both of them impossible. None can ' drink deep' enough to be, 
in truth, anything more than very superficial ; and every human 
being, that is not a downright idiot, must taste. 

It is plainly impossible that any man should acquire a know- 
ledge of all that is to be known, on all subjects. But is it then 
meant that, on each particular subject on which he does learn 
anything at all, he should be perfectly well informed 'i Here it 
may fairly be asked, what isthe ' well V — how much knowledge 
is to be called ' little' or ' much ?' For, in many departments, 
the very utmost that had been acquired by the greatest profi- 
cients, a century and a half back, falls short of what is familiar 
to inany a boardj^ig-school miss now. And it is likely that our 
posterity, a century and a half hence, vfill in many things be 
just as much in advance of us. And in most subjects, the 
utmost knowledge that any man can attain to, is but^^'a little 
learning' in comparison of what h§ remains ignorant of. The 
view resembles that of an American forest, in which the more 
trees a man cuts down, the greater is the expanse of wood he 
sees around him."' 

But supposing you define the ' much' and tlie ' little' with 
reference to the existing state of knowledge in the present age 
and country, would any one seriously advise that those who are 
not proficients in astronomy should remain ignorant Avhether 
the earth moves or the sun? — that unless you are comj^lete 
master of agriculture, as far as it is at present understood, there 
is no good in your knowing wheat from barley ? — that unless 
you are such a Grecian as Porson, you had better not learn to 
construe the Greek Testament ? 



Essay L] Annotations. 4^7 

Tlie other recomraeiulation of the poet, ' taste not' — that is to 
say, liave no learning, — is eqnally impossible. The truth is, every 
body has, and everybody ought to have, a slight and superficial 
knowledge — a 'smattering,' if you will — of more subjects than 
it is possible for the most diligent student to acquire thoroughly. 
It is very possible, and also v^y useful, to have that slight 
smattering of chemistry Mdiich will enable one to distinguish 
from the salts used in medicine, the oxalic acid, with which, 
through mistake, several persons have been poisoned. Again, 
without being an eminent botanist, a person may know — what 
it is most important to know — the dift'erence between cherries 
and the berries of the deadly nightshade ; the want of which 
knowledge has cost many lives. 

Again, there is no one, even of those who are not profound 
politicians, who is not aware that we have Eulers ; and is it not 
proper that he should understand that government is necessary 
to preserve our lives and property ? Is he likely to be a worse 
subject for knowing that? Tliat depends very much on the 
kind of government you wish to establish. If you wish to 
establish an unjust and despotic government — or, if you wish 
to set up a false religion — then it would be advisable to avoid 
the danger of enlightening the people. But if you wish to 
maintain a good government, the more the people understand 
the advjmtages of such a government, the more they w^ll respect 
it ; and the more they know of true religion, the more they will 
value it, 

^ There is nothing more general among uneducated people than 
a disposition to socialism, and yet nothing more injurious to 
their own welfare. An equalization of wages would be most in- 
jurious to themselves, for it would, at once, destroy all emulation. 
All motives for the acquisition of skill, and for superior in- 
dustry, would be removed. Kow, it is but a little knowledge of 
political economy that is needed for the removal of this error ; 
but that little is highly useful^^^ 

Again, every one knows, no matter how ignorant of medicine, 
that there is such a thing as disease. But as an instance of 
the impossibility of the 'taste not' recommendation of the poet, 
a fact may be mentioned, which perhaps is known to most. 
When the cholera broke out in Poland, the peasantry of that 
country took it into their heads that the nobles were poisoning 



448 Of Studies. [Essay 1. 

« 
them in order to clear the country of them ; they beheved the 
rich to he tlie authors of that terrible disease ; and the conse- 
quence was that the peasantry rose in masses, broke into the 
houses of the nobility, and finding some chloride of lime, which 
had been used for the purpose of disinfecting, they took it for 
the poison w^hich had caused ^e disease ; and they murdered 
them. Now, that was the sort of 'little learning' which was 
very dangerous. 

Again, we cannot prevent people from believing that there 
is some superhuman Being who has regard to human affairs. 
Some clowns in the "Weald of Kent, w4io had been kept as 
much as possible on the ' taste not' system, — left in a state of 
gross ignorance,— yet believed that the Deity did impart special 
powers to certain men : and that belief, coupled with excessive 
stupidity, led them to take an insane fanatic for a prophet. In 
this case, this ' little learning' actually caused an insurrection 
in his favour, in order to make him king, priest, and prophet of 
the British empire ; and many lives were sacrificed before this 
insane insurrection was put down. If a 'little learning' is a 
' dangerous thing,' you will have to keep people in a perfect 
state of idiotcy in order to avoid that danger, I would, there- 
fore, say that both the recommendations of the poet are im- 
practicable. 

The question arises, what are we to do ? Simply to impress 
npon ourselves and npon all people the importance of labouring 
in that much neglected branch of human knowledge — the know- 
ledge of our own ignorance ; — and of remembering that it is by 
a confession of real ignorance that real knowledge must be 
gained. But even when that further knowledge is not attained, 
still even the knowledge of the ignorance is a great thing in 
itself ; so great, it seems, as to constitute Socrates the wisest of 
his time. 

Some of the chief sources ofimTcnown ignorance may be worth 
noticing here. They are to be found in our not being aware, 

1. How inadequate a medium language is for conveying thought. 

2. How inadequate our very minds are for the comprehension 
of many things. 3. How little we need understand a word 
which may yet be familiar to us, and which we may use in reason- 
ing. This piece, of ignorance is closely connected with the two 
foregoing. (Hence, frequently, men will accept as an expla- 



Essay 1.] Annotations. 449 

nation of a phenomenon, a mere statement of tlie difficulty in 
other words.) 4. How utterly ignorant we are of efficient 
causes ; and how the philosopher who refers to the law of gra- 
vitation the falling of a stone to the earth, no further explains 
the phenomenon than the peasant, who would say it is the 
nature of it. The philosopher knows that the stone obeys the 
same law to which all other bodies are subject, and to which, 
for convenience, he gives the name of gravitation. His know- 
ledge is only more general than the peasant's ; which, however, 
is a vast advantage. 5. How many words there are that ex- 
i^ress, not the nature of the thing they are applied to, but the 
manner in which they affect us: and which, therefore, give 
about as correct a notion of those things, as the word ' crooked' 
would, if applied to a stick half immersed in water. (Such is 
the word Chalice, with all its family.) 6. How many causes 
may and usually do, conduce to the same effect. Y. How liable 
the taculties, even of the ablest, are to occasional failure ; so 
that they shall overlook mistakes (and those often the most at 
variance with their own established notions) which, when once 
exjposed^ seem quite gross even to inferior men. 8. How much 
all are biassed, in all their moral reasonings, by self-love, or 
perhaps, rather, partially to human nature^ and other passions. 
9. Dugald Stewart would add very justly. How little we know 
of matter ; no more indeed than of mind ; though all are prone 
to attempt explaining the plienomena of mind by those of 
matter : for, what is familiar men generally consider as well 
hnA)wn, though the fact is oftener otherwise. 

The errors arising from these causes, and from not calculating 
on them, — that is, in short, from ignorance of our own ignorance, 
have probably impeded philosophy more than all other obstacles 
put together. 

Certain it is, that only by this ignorance of our ignorance can 
' a little learning' become ' a dangerous thing.' The dangers 
of knowledge are not to be compared with the dangers of igno- 
rance. A man is more likely to miss his way in darkness than 
in twilight : in twilight than in full sun. And those contemners 
of studies who say (with Mandeville, in his Treatise against 
Charity-schools) ' If a horse knew as much as a man, I should 
not like to be his rider,' ought to add, ' If a man knew as little 
as a horse, I should not like to trust him to ride.' It is indeed 
38* FF 



450 Of Studies. [Essay I. 

possible to educate tlie cliildren of tlie poor so as to disqualify 
tliem for an humble and laborious station in life ; but this 
mistake does not so much consist in the amount of the know- 
ledge imparted, as in the Mnd and the manner of education. 
Habits early engrafted on children, of regular attention, — of 
steady application to what they are about, — of prompt obedience 
to the directions they receive, — of cleanliness, order, and decent 
and modest behaviour, cannot but be of advantage to them in 
after life, whatever their station may be. And certainly, their 
familiar acquaintance with the precej^ts and example of Him 
who, when all stations of life were at his command, chose to be 
the reputed son of a poor mechanic, and to live with peasants 
and fishermen ; or, again, of his apostle Paul, whose own hands 
'ministered to his necessities,' and to those of his cbmpanions: — 
such studies, I say, can surely never tend to unfit any one for a 
life of humble and contented industry. 

What, then, is the 'smattering' — the imperfect and superficial 
knowledge — that really does deserve contempt ? A slight and 
superficial knowledge is justly condemned, when it is put in the 
place of more full and exact knowledge. Such an acquaintance 
with chemistry and anatomy, e. g. as would be creditable, and 
not useless, to a lawyer, would be contemptible for a physician ; 
and such an acquaintance with law as would be desirable for 
him, would be a most discreditable smattering for a lawyer. 

It is to be observed that the word smattering is applied to 
two different kinds of scanty knowledge — the rudimentary and 
the su^perficial ', though it seems the more strictly to belong to 
the latter. Kow, as it is evident that no one can learn all 
things perfectly, it seems best for a man to make some pursuit 
his main object, according to, first, his calling ^ secondly, his 
natural hent I or ihiYdXy^hh ojJjportuyiities: tlien, let him get a 
slight knowledge of what else is worth it, regulated in his choice 
by the same three circumstances ; which should also determine, 
in great measure, where an elementary and where a superficial 
knowledge is desirable. Such as are of the most dignified and 
philosophical nature are most proper for elementary study ; 
and such as we are the most likely to be called upon to practise 
;for ourselves, the most proper for superficial ; e. g., it would be 
to most men of no practical use, and, consequentl}^, not worth 
while, to learn by heart the meaning of some of the Chinese 



Essay 1.] Annoiai'wns. 451 

characters ; but it miglit be very well worth while to study the 
principles on which that most singular language is constructed: 
contra^ there is nothing very curious or interesting in the 
structure of the Portuguese language ; hut if one were going to 
travel in Portugal, it would be worth while to pick up some words 
and phrases. If both circumstances conspire, then, both kinds 
of information are to be sought for; and such things should be 
learned a little at hoth <;nds ; that is, to understand the ele- 
mentary and i\\\\^?a\\Q\\{a\ principles^ and also to know some of 
the most remarkable results — a little of the rudiments, and a 
little of what is most called for in practice. E. g,^ a man who 
has not made any of the physical or mathematical sciences his 
favourite pui^suit, ought yet to know the principles of geometrical 
reasoning, and the elements of mechanics ; and also to know, by 
rote, something of the magnitude, distances, and motions of 
the heavenly bodies, though without having gone over the in- 
termediate course of scientific demonstration. 

Grammar, logic, rhetoric, and metaphysics, [or the philosophy 
of mind,] are manifestly studies of an elementary nature, being 
concerned about the instruments which we employ in effecting 
our purposes ; and ethics, which is, in fact, a branch of meta- 
2)hysics, may be called the elements of conduct. Such know- 
ledge is far from showy. Elements do not much come into 
sight ; they are like that part of a bridge which is under water, 
and is therefore least admi^-ed, though it is not the work of 
least art and difficulty. On this ground it is suitable to females, 
as least leading to that pedantry which learned ladies must ever 
be peculiarly liable to, as well as least exciting that jealousy to 
which they must ever be exposed, while learning in them con- 
tinues to be a distinction. A woman might, in this way, be 
very learned without any one's finding it out. 

' Bead not to contradict and confute, nor to helieve and take for 
granted, nor to find talk and discourse, hut to weigh and 
consider. Some hooks are to he tasted, others to he swal- 
lowed, and some few to he chewed and digested? 

It would have been well if Bacon had added some hints as 
to the r)iode of study : how books are to be chewed, and swal- 
lowed, and digested. For, besides inattentive readers, whs 



452 Of Studies. [Essay 1. 

measure tlieir proficiency by the pages tliey have gone over, 
it is quite possible, and not uncommon, to read most labo- 
riously, even so as to get by lieai't tbe words of a book, without 
really studijing it at all ; that is, without employing the tlcoughts 
on the subject. 

In pai'ticular, there is, in reference to Scripture^ ^a habit 
cherished by some persons, of reading — assiduously, indeed, — 
but without any attentive reflection and studious endeavoiu- to 
ascertain the real sense of what they read — concluding that 
whatever impression is found to be left on the mind after a bare 
perusal of the words, must be wdiat the sacred writers designed. 
They use, in short, little or none of that care which is employed 
on any other subject in which we are much interested, to read 
through each treatise consecutively as a whole, — ^to compare one 
passage with others that may throw light on it, and to consider 
what w^as the general drift of the author, and what w^ere the 
occasions, and the persons he had in view. 

' In fact, the real students of Scripture, properly so called, 
are, I fear, fewer than is commonly supposed. The theological 
student is often a student chiefly of some human system of 
divinity, fortified by references to Scripture, introduced from 
time to time as there is occasion. lie proceeds — often uncon- 
sciously — ^by setting himself to ascertain, not what is the infor- 
mation or instruction to be derived from a certain narrative or 
discourse of one of the sacred winters, but what aid can be 
derived from them towards establishing or refuting this or that 
point of dogmatic theology. Such a mode of study surely 
ought at least not to be exclusively pursued. At any rate, it 
cannot properly be called a studi/ of S&n'j)ture. 

' There is, in fact, a danger of its proving a great Idnd/'atice to 
the profitable study of Scripture ; for so strong an association is 
apt to be established in the mind between certain expressions, 
and the technical sense to which they have been confined in 
some theological system, that when the student meets with 
them in Scripture, he at once understands them in that sense, 
in passages w^here perhaps an unbiassed examination of the 
context would plainly show that such was not the author's 
meaning. And such a student one may often find expressing 



See Essays on the Difficulties of St. Paul's Epistles. Essay X. page 



Essay L] j^nnotations. 453 

tlie most unfeigned wonder at tlie blindness of those wlio 
cannot find in Scripture suck and such doctrines, which appear 
to him to be as clearlj set forth there as words can express j 
which perhaj3s thej are, on the (often gratuitous) supposition^ 
that tliose words are everywhere to be understood exactly in 
die sense which he has preyiously derived from some human 
system, — a system through 'which, as through a discolom-ed 
auedium, he views Scripture- But this is not to take Scriptui^ 
for one's guide, but rather to make one's self a guide to 
Scripture. 

' Others, again, there aw3, who ai*e habitual ivsaders of the 
Bible, and perhap.s of little else, but who yet cannot properly 
be said to study anything at all on the subject of religion, be- 
cause, as was observed just above, they do not even attempt 
to exercise their mind on the subject, but trust to be sufiiciently 
enlightened and guided by the mere act of perusal, .while their 
minds remain in a passive state. And some, I believe, pro- 
ceed thus on princi]3le, considering tliat they are the better 
recipients of i>evealed truth the less they exercise their own 
reason. 

' But this is to pi\>oeed on a totally mistaken view of the real 
pix)vmce of reason. It would, indeed, be a great error to at- 
temj)t substituting for revelation conjectures framed in our own 
mind, or to speculate on matters concerning which we have an 
imperfect knowledge imiDarted to us by revelation, and could 
have had, without it, none at ail. But this would be, not to 
use, but to abuse, our rational faculties. By the use of our 
senses, which are as much the gift of the Creator as anything 
else we enjoy, — and by employing our reason on the objects 
around us, we can obtain a certain amount of valuable know- 
ledge. And I^eyond this, there are certain other jx)ints of 
knowledge unattainable by these faculties, and which God has 
thought fit bo impart to us by his inspired messengere. But 
both the volumes — that of Nature and that of Revelation — 
which He lias thought good to lay before us, are to be carefully 
studied. On both of them we must diligently employ the 
faculties with which He, the Author of both, has endued us, if 
we would derive full benefit from his gifts. 

'The telescope, we know, brings within the sphere of our 
own vision much that would be undiscernible by the naked 



454 Of Studies, [Essay 1. 

eye ; but we mtist not the less employ our eyes in making use 
of it \ and we must watch and calculate the motions, and reason 
on the appearances, of the lieavenly bodies, which are visible 
only through the telescope, with the same care we employ in 
respect of those seen by the naked eye. 

' And an analogous procedure is requisite if we would derive 
the intended benefit from the pag«s of inspiration, which were 
designed not to save us the trouble of inquiring and reflecting,, 
but to enable us,, on some points, to inquire and reflect to better 
purpose — not to supersede the use of our reason, but to supply 
its deficiencies.' , 

Although, however, it is quite right, and most important, that 
the thoughts should be exercised on the subject of what you are 
reading,, there is one mode of exercising the thoughts that is 
very hurtful ; which is, that of suhstituting C09ijectures for atten- 
tion to what the author says. Preli7jii7iary reflection on the 
subject is, as has been above said, ver^ useful in many cases ; 
though by the way, it is unsafe as a preparation for the study 
of ScAjpture y and,, in all studies, care should be taken to guard 
against allowing the judgment to be biassed by notions hastily 
and prematurely adopted. And again, after you have studied 
an author, it will be very advisable (supposing it is an unin- 
spired and consequently fallible one) to reflect on what he says, 
and consider whether he is right,, and how far. 

But while actually engaged in perusal, attend to what the 
w^riter actually says, and endeavour fairly to arrive at his mean- 
ing, hefore you proceed to speculate upon it for yourself. 

The study of a book, in short,, should be conducted nearly 
according to the same rule that Bacon lays down for the study 
of nature. He warns philosophers, eai'nestly and often, against 
substituting for what he calls the ' interrogatio nature,' the 
'■ anticipatio naturae ;' that is, instead of attentive observation 
and experiment, forming conjectures as to wdiat seems to us 
likely, or fitting^ according to some hypothesis devised by our- 
selves. In like manner, in studying an author, you should 
heej) ajpart interpretation and conjecture. 

A good teacher warns a student of some book in a foreign 
language that he is leai'ning., not to guess what the author is 
likely to have meant, and then twist the words into that sense, 
against the idiom of the language ; but to be led hy the words 



Essay 1.] Annotations. 455 

in tlie first instance ; and then, if a difficnlty as to tlie sense re- 
mains, to guess which of the possible meanings of the words is 
the most hlvelj to be the right. 

^. g. The words in tlie original of John xviii. 15, o dXXog 
$.'.adT]T7]-g,'' plainly signify, ' tks other disciple ;' and one of the 
commentators, perceiving that this is inconsistent with the 
opinion he had taken up, that this disciple was John himself 
(since John had not been mentioned before, and the Article, 
therefore, would make it refer to Judas, who alone had been 
just above named), boldly suggests that the reading must be 
zorong (though all the MSS- agree in it), and that the Article 
ought to be omitted, because it spoils the sense; that is, the 
sense which agrees with a conjecture adopted in defiance of the 
words of the passage. 

This one instance may serve as a specimen of the way in 
which some, instead of interpreting an author, undertake to re- 
write what he has said. 

The like rule holds good in other studies, quite as much as in 
that of a language. We should be ever on our guard against 
the tendency to read through coloured sjpectacles. 

Educational habits of thought, analogies, antecedent reason- 
ings, feelings, and wishes, &c., will be always leading us to form 
some conjectural hypothesis, which is not necessarily hurtful, 
and may sometimes furnish a useful hint, but which must be 
most carefully watched, lest it produce an unfair bias, and lead 
you to strain into a conformity with it the words or the phen- 
omena before you. 

A man sets out with a conjecture as to what the Apostles 
are likely to have said, or oxiglit to have said, in conformity 
with the theological system he has learnt ; or what the Most 
High may have done or designed ; or what is, or is not agree- 
able to the ' analogy of taith' (see Campbell on the Gospels) ; 
i. e., of a piece with the christian system, — namely, that which 
hs has been taught, by fallible inen^ to regard as the christian 
system ; and then he proceeds to examine Scripture, as he 
would examine with leading questions a witness whom he had 
summoned in his cause. 

' As the fool thinketh, 
So the bell chinkoth.' 

Perhaps he '■jprays through'' all the Bible ; not with a candid 



456 Of Studies, [Essay 1. 

and teachable mind, seeking instruction, but unconsciously 
praying that he may Jind himself in the right And he will 
seldom fail. 

' Ilic liber est in quo qiiserit sua dogmata quisque ; 
Invenit et pai-iter dogmata quisque sua.' 

' In this book many students seek each one to find 
The doctrine or precept that's most to liis mind : 
And each of them finds what they earnestly seek : 
For as the fool thinks even so the bells speak.' 

It is the same with philosophy. If you have a strong wish 
to find phenomena such as to confirm the conjectures you have 
formed, and allow that wish to bias your examination, you are 
ill-fitted for interrogating nature. Both that, and the other 
volume of the records of what God does, — ^Revelation, — are to 
be interrogated, not as loitnesses but as indructors.. You must 
let all your conjectures hang loose upon you ; and be prepared 
to learn from what is written in each of those volumes, with 
the aid of the conjectures of reason ; not from reason (nor, by 
the bye, from feelings and fancies, and wishes, and human 
authority), with Scripture for your aid. 

This latter procedure, which is a very common one with theo- 
logical students, may be called making an anagram of Scrip- 
ture, — taking it to pieces and reconstructing it in the model of 
some human system of ' Institutes :' building a temple of one's 
own, consisting of the stones of the true one pulled down and 
put together in a new fashion. 

Yet divines of this description are often considered by others 
as well as by themselves, pre-eminently scriptural, from their 
continual employment of the very loords of Scrijiture, and their 
readiness in citing a profusion of texts. But, in reality, instead 
of using a human commentary on Scripture, they use Scripture 
itself as a kind of commentary on some human system. They 
make the ivarp human, and interweave an abundance of Scrip- 
ture as a woof I which is just the reverse of the right procedure. 
But this may be called, truly, in a certain sense, ' taking a text 
from Scripture,' ' preaching such and such a doctrine out of 
Scripture,' and ' improving Scripture.' 

Thus it is that men, when comparing their opinions with the 
standard of God's Word, sufier these opinions to lend the rule 
by which they are to be measured. But he who studies the 
Scriptures should remember that he is consulting the Spirit of 



Essay L] Annotations. 457 

Truth, and if he would hope for his aid, through whose en- 
lightening and supporting grace alone those Scriptures can be 
read with advantage, he must search honestly and earnestly for 
the truth. 

' Bead not to contradict and confute ; nor to helieve and take far 
granted.'' 

With respect to the deference due to the opinions (written 
or spoken) of intelligent and well-informed men, it may be 
remarked, that hefore a question has been fully argued, there is 
a presumption that they are in the right ; but afterwards, if 
objections have been brought which they have failed to answer, 
the presumption is the other way. The wiser, and the more 
learned, and the more numerous, are those opposed to you, and 
the more strenuous and persevering their opposition, the greater 
is the probability that if there were any flaw in your argument 
they would have refuted you. And therefore your adhering to 
an opposite opinion from theirs, so far from being a mark of 
arrogant contempt, is, in reality, the strongest proof of a high 
respect for them. For example — The strongest coniirmation of 
the fidelity of the translations of Scripture, published by the 
Irish School Commissioners, is to be found in the many futile 
attempts, made by many able and learned men, to detect errors 
in them. 

This important distinction is often overlooked. 

' Reading maTceth a full man, coiference a ready man, and 
writing an exact man.'' 

Writing an Analysis, table of Contents, Index, or Notes to 
any book, is very important for the study, properly so called, of 
any subject. And so, also, is the practice oi previously con- 
versing or writing on the subject you are about to study. 

I have elsewhere alluded to this kind of practice,* and sug- 
gested to the teacher ' to put before his pupils, previously to 
their reading each lesson, some questions pertaining to the 
matter of it, requiring of them answers, oral or written, the 



^ See Preface to Easy Lessons on Reasoning. Page v. 

39 



458 Of Studies. [Essay 1. 

best tliey can think of without consulting the book. K'ext, let 
them read the lesson, having other questions, such as may lead 
to any needful explanations, put before them as they proceed. 
And afterwards let them be examined (introducing numerous 
examples framed by themselves, and by the teacher) as to the 
portion they have learned, in order to judge how far they 
remember it. 

' Of the three kinds of questions, — which may be called, 
1, Prelinvmary questions; 2, questions of instruction^ and 
3, questions of examination^ — the last alone are, by a con- 
siderable portion of instructors, commonly employed. And the 
elementary books commonly known as ' catechisms,' or ' books 
in question and answer,' consist, in reality, of questions of this 
description. 

' But the second kind, — what is properly to be called in- 
structive questioning, — is employed by all who deserve to be 
reckoned good teachers. 

' The first kind — the preliminary questioning — is employed 
(systematically and constantly) but by few. And, at first sight, 
it might be supposed by those who have not had experience of 
it, that it would be likely to increase the learner's difliculties. 
But if any well-qualified instructor will but carefully and judi- 
ciously try the experiment (in teaching any kind of science), he 
will be surprised to find to how great a degree this exercise of 
the student's mind on the subject will contribute to his ad- 
vancement, lie wull find that what has been taught in the 
mode above suggested, will have been learnt in a sliorter time, 
will have been far the more thoroughlj^ understood, and will be 
fixed incomparably the better in the memory.' 

Curiosity is as much the parent of attention, as attention is 
of memor^^ ; therefore the first business of a teacher — first, not 
only in point of time, but of importance — should be to excite, 
not merely a general curiosity on the subject of the study, but a 
particular curiosity on particular points in that subject. To 
teach one who has no cm-iosity to learn, is to sow a field with- 
out ploughing it. 

And this process saves a student from being (as many are) 
intellectually damaged by having a very good memory. For, 
an unskilful teacher is content to put before ,his pupils what 
they have to learn, and ascertaining that they remember it. 



Essay 1.] Annotations. 459 

And thus those of them whose memoiy is ready and attentive, 
have their mind left in a merely passive state, and are like a 
person always carried about in a sedan chair, till he has almost 
lost the use of his limbs. And then it is made a wonder that 
a person who has been so well taught, and who was so quick 
in learning and remembering, should not prove an able man ; 
which is about as reasonable as to expect that a capacious 
cistern, if filled, should be converted into a perennial fountain. 
Many are saved, by the deficiency of their memory, from 
being spoiled by their education ; for those who have no extra- 
ordinary memory are driven to supply its defects by thinking. 
If they do not remember a mathematical demonstration, they 
are driven to devise one. If they do not exactly retain what 
Aristotle or Smith have said, they are driven to consider what 
they were lil'ely to have said, or ought to have said. And 
thus their faculties are invigorated by exercise. 

Kow, this kind of exercises a. skilful teacher will afford to 
all I so that no one shall be spoiled by the goodness of his 
memory. 

A very common practice may be here noticed, which should 
be avoided, if we would create a habit of studying with profit — • 
that of making children learn hj rote what they do not binder- 
stand. ' It is done on this plea — that they will hereafter learn 
the meaning of what they have been thus taught, and will be 
able to make a practical use of it." But no attempt at economy 
of time can be more injudicious. Let any child whose capacity 
is so far matured as to enable him to comprehend an explana- 
tion, — e. g.^ of the Lord's Prayer — have it then put before him 
for the first time, and when he is made acquainted with the 
meaning of it, set to learn it by heart ; and can any one doubt 
that, in less than a half a day's application, he would be able 
to repeat it fluently ? And the same would be the case with 
other forms. All that is learned by rote by a child before 
he is competent to attach a meaning to the words he utters, 
would not, if all put together, amount to so much as would 
cost him, when able to understand it, a week's labour to learn 
perfectly. Whereas, it may cost the toil, often the vain toil, 
of many years, to unlearn the habit oi formalism — of repeating 



London Review. No. xi. pages 412, 413. 



460 Of Studies. [Essay 1. 

words by rote witliout attending to tlieir meaning ; a habit 
wliicli every one conversant with education knows to be in all 
subjects most readily acquired by children, and with difhculty 
avoided even with the utmost care of the teacher ; but which 
such a plan must^inevitably tend to generate. It is often said, 
and very truly, that it is important to form early habits of 
piety; but to train a child in one kind of habit, is not the 
most likely way of forming the opposite one ; and nothing can 
be more contrary to true piety, than the Romish superstitiqn 
(for such in fact it is) of attaching efhcacy to the repetition of a 
certain form of words as a charm, independent of the under- 
standing and of the heart. 

' It is also said, with equal truth, that we ought to take ad- 
vantage of the facility which children possess of learning : but 
to infer from thence, that Providence designs us to make such 
a use (or rather abuse) of this gift as we have been censuring, 
is as if we were to take advantage of the readiness with which 
a new-born babe swallows whatever is put into its mouth, to 
dose it with ardent spii'its, instead of wholesome food and neces- 
sary medicine. The readiness with which children learn and 
remember words, is in truth a most important advantage if 
rightly employed ; viz. if applied to the acquiring that mass of 
what ma}' be called rt;'J/i!r«ry knowledge of insulated tacts, which 
can only be learned by rote, and which is necessary in after life ; 
when the acquisition of it would both be more troublesome, 
and would encroach on time that might otherwise be better 
employed. Chronology, names of countries, weights and mea- 
sures, and indeed all the words of any language, are of this de- 
scription. If a child had even ten times the ordinary degree 
of the faculty in question, a judicious teacher would lind abund- 
ance of useful employment for it, without resorting to any that 
could possibly be detrimental to his future habits, moi-al, reli- 
gious, or intellectual.' 

One very useful precept for students, is never to remain long 
puzzling out any difficulty ; but lay the book and the subject 
aside, and return to it some hours after, or next day; after 
having turned the attention to something else. Sometimes a 
person will weary his mind for several hours in some efforts 
(which might have been spared) to make out some difficulty ; and 



Essay 1.] Annotations. 461 

next day, wlien lie returns to the subject, will find it quite 
easy. 

The like takes place in the eftbrt to recollect some name. 
You may fatigue yourself in vain for hours together ; and if 
you turn to something else (which you m^ght as well have 
done at once) the name will, as it were, flash across you with- 
out an effort. 

There is something analogous to this, in reference to the 
scent of dogs. When a wounded bird, for instance, has been 
lost in the thicket, and the dogs fail, after some search, to find 
it, a skilful sportsman always draws them oft', and hunts them 
elsewhere for an hour, and then brings them back to the spot 
to try afresh ; and they will often, then, find their game readily ; 
though, if they had been hunting for it all the time, they would 
have failed. 

It seems as if the dog — and the mind — having got into a kind 
of wrong track, continued in the same error, till drawn com- 
pletely away elsewhere. 

Always trust, therefore, for the overcoming of a difficulty, not 
to long continued study after you have once got bewildered, but 
to repeated trials, at intervals. 

It may be here observed that the student of any science or 
art, should not only distinctly understand all the technical lan- 
guage, and all the rules of the art, but also learn them by 
heart, so that they may be remembered as familiarly as the 
alphabet, and employed constantly and with scrupulous exact- 
ness. Otherwise, technical language will prove an encumbrance 
instead of an advantage, just as a suit of clothes would be, if 
instead of putting them on and wearing them, one should carry 
them about in his hands. 

' There is no stond or impediment in the wit, hut may he wrought 
out hy fit studies.'' 

It is a pity that Bacon did not more fully explain the mode 
in which different kinds of studies act on the mind. As an ex- 
ercise of the reasoning faculty, pure mathematics is an admirable 
exercise, because it consists of reasoning alone, and does not 
encumber the student with any exercise oi judgment : and it is 
well always to begin with learning one thing at a time, and to 
defer a combination of mental exerc'ses to a later period. But 
39* 



462 Of Studies. [Essay 1. 

then it is important to remember that mathematics does not 
exercise the judgment / and consequently, if too exclusively 
pui-sued, may leave the student very ill qualified for moral 
reasonings. 

' 'The definitione, which are the principles of our reasoning, 
are vqyj few, and the axioms still fewer ; and both are, for the 
most part, laid down and placed hfore the student in the outset ^ 
the introduction of a new definition or axiom being of com- 
paratively rare occurrence, at wide intervals, and with & formal 
statement, besides which, there is no room for douht concerning 
either. On the other hand, in all reasonings which regard 
matters of fact, we introduce, almost at evefy step, fresh and 
fresh propositions (to a very great number) which had not been 
elicited in the coui-se of our reasoning, but are taken for granted; 
viz., facts, and laws of nature, which are here the principles of 
our reasoning, and maxims, or ' elements of belief,' which an- 
swer to the axioms in mathematics. If, at the opening of a 
treatise, for example, on chemistry, on agriculture, on political- 
economy, &c., the author should make, as in mathematics, a 
formal statement of all the propositions he intended to assume 
as granted, throughout the whole work, both he and his readers 
would be astonished at the number ; and, of these, many would 
■be only probable, and there would be much room for doubt as 
to the degree of probability, and for judgment in ascertaining 
that degree. 

' Moreover, mathematical axioms are always employed pre- 
cisely in the same simple form : e. g., the axiom that ' the things 
equal to the same are equal to one another,' is cited, whenever 
there is need, in those very words ; whereas the maxims em- 
ployed in the other class of subjects, admit of, and require, 
continual modifications in the application of them. E. g., ' the 
stability of the laM's of nature,' which is our constant assumption 
in inquiries relating to natural philosophy, appears in many 
different shapes, and in some of them does not possess the same 
complete certainty as in others ; <?. g., when, from having always 
observed a certain shegj) ruminating, w^e infer, that this indi- 
vidual sheep will continue to ruminate, we assume that ' the 
property which has hitherto belonged to this sheep will remain 
imchanged ;' when we infer the same property of all sheep, we 



Elements of Logic. 



Essay 1.] Annotatmis. 4G3 

assume that ' tlie property which belongs to this inclividnal be- 
longs to the -whole species ;' if, on comparing sheep with some 
other kinds of horned animals/ and finding that all agree in ru- 
minating, we infer that ' all horned animals ruminate,' we assume 
that ' the whole of a genus or class are likely to agree in any 
point wdierein many species of that genus agree :' or in other 
words, 'that if one of two properties, &c. has often been found 
accompanied by another, and never without it, the former will 
be tmiversaUy accompanied by the latter ;' now all these are 
merely different forms of the maxim, that ' nature is uniform 
in her operations,' which, it is evident, varies in expression in 
almost every different case where it is applied, and the applica- 
tion of which admits of every degree of evidence, from perfect 
moral certainty, to mere conjecture. 

' The same may be said of an infinite number of principles 
and maxims appropriated to, and emj)loyed in, each particular 
branch of study. Hence, all such reasonings are, in comparison 
of mathematics, very complex ; requiring so much more than 
that does, beyond the process of merely deducing the conclusion 
logically from the premises : so that it is no wonder that the 
longest mathematical demonstration should be so much more 
easily constructed and understood, than a much shorter train 
of just reasoning concerning real facts. The former has been 
aptly compared to a long and steep, but even and regular, flight 
of steps, which tries the breath, and the strength, and the per- 
severance .only ; while the latter resembles a short, but rugged 
and uneven, ascent up a precipice, which requires a quick eye, 
agile limbs, and a firm step ; and in Avhich we have to tread 
now on this side, now on that — ever considering, as we proceed, 
whether this or that projection will afford room for our foot, or 
whether some loose stone may not slide from under us. There 
are probably as many steps of pure reasoning in one of the 
longer of Euclid's demonstrations, as in the whole of an argu- 
mentative treatise on some other subject, occupying perhaps a 
considerable volume. 

'It may be observed here that mathematical reasoning, as 
it calls for no exercise of judgment respecting probabilities, is 

* Viz., having horns on the skull. What are called the horns of the rhinoceros 
are quite different in origin, and in structure, as well as in situation from what 
are properly called horns. 



464 Of Studies. [Essay 1. 

the best kind of introductory exercise ; and from the same cause, 
is apt, when too exchisively pursued, to make men incorrect 
moral-reasoners. 

'As for those ethical and legal reasonings which were lately 
mentioned as in some respects resembling those of mathematics, 
(viz. sucli as keep clear of all assertions resj)ecting facts) they 
have this difference ; that not only men are not so completely 
agreed respecting the maxims and principles of ethics and law, 
but the meaning also of each term cannot be absolutely, and 
for ever, fixed by an arbitrary definition ; on the contrary, a 
great part of our labour consists in distinguishing accurately the 
various senses in which men employ each term, — ascertaining 
which is the most proper, — and taking care to avoid confound- 
ing them together. 

' It may be worth while to add in this place that as a candid 
disposition, — a hearty desire to judge fairly, and to attain truth, 
— are evidently necessary with a view to give fair play to the 
reasoning-powers, in subjects where we are liable to a bias from 
interest or feelings, so, a fallacious perversion of this maxim 
finds a place in the minds of some persons : who accordingly 
speak disparagingly of all exercise of the reasoning-faculty in 
moral and religious subjects ; declaiming on the insufficiency of 
mere intellectual power for 'the attainment of truth in such 
matters, — on the necessity of appealing to the heart rather than 
to the head, &c., and then leading their readers or themselves 
to the conclusion that the less we reason on such subjects the 
safer we are. 

' But the proper olfice of candour is to prepare the mind not 
for the rejection of all evidence, but for the right reception of 
evidence ; — not, to be a suhstituie for reasons, but to enable us 
fairly to vjeigk the reasons on both sides. Such persons as I 
am alluding to are in fact saying that since just weights alone, 
without a just balance, will avail nothing, therefore we have 
only to take care of the scales, and let the weights take care of 
themselves. 

' This kind of tone is of course most especially to be found in 
such writers as consider it expedient to inculcate on the mass 
of mankind what — there is reason to suspect — they do not them- 
selves fully believe, and which they apprehend is the more 
likely to be rejected the more it is investigated.' 



Essay 1.] Annotations. 465 

A curious anecdote (whicli I had heard, in substance, somQ 
years before) was told me by the late Sir Alexander Johnstone. 
When he was acting as temporary governor of Ceylon (soon 
after its cession), he sat once as judge in a trial of a prisoner 
for a robbery and murder ; and the evidence seemed to him so 
conclusive, that he was about to charge the jury (who were 
native Cingalese) to find a verdict of guilty. But one of the 
jurors fisked and obtained permission to examine the witnesses 
iiimself. He had them brought in one by one, and cross-exam- 
ined them so ably as to elicit the fact that they were themselves 
the perpetrators of the crime, which they afterwards had con- 
spired to impute to the prisoner. And they were accordingly 
put on their trial and convicted. 

Sir A. J. was greatly struck by the intelligence displayed by 
this juror ; the more, as he was only a small farmer, who was 
not known to have had any remarkable advantages of education. 
He sent for him, and after commending the wonderful sagacity 
he had shown, inquired eagerly what his studies had been. The 
man replied that he had never read but one book, the only one 
he possessed, which had long been in his family, and whicli he 
delighted to study in his leisure-hours. This book he was pre- 
vailed on to show to Sir A. J,, who put it into the hands of one 
who knew the Cingalese language. It turned out to be a trans- 
lation into that language of a large portion of Aristotle's Or- 
ganon. It appears that the Portuguese, when they first settled 
in Ceylon and other parts of the East, translated into the native 
languages several of the works then studied in tli,e European 
Universities ; among which were the Latin versions of Aris- 
totle. 

The Cingalese in question said that if his understanding had 
been in any degree cultivated and improved, it was to that book 
he owed it. 

It is very important to warn all readers of the influence 
likely to be exercised in the formation of their opinions, indi- 
rectly, and by works not professedly argumentative, such as 
Poems and Tales. Fletcher of Saltoun said, he would let any 
one have the making of the laws of a country, if he might have 
the making of their ballads. 

An observation in the Lectures on Political Economy on one 

GG 



466 Of Studies. [Essay I. 

cause wliicli lias contributed to foster an erroneous opinion of 
the superior moral purity of poor and half-civilized countries, 
is equally applicable to a multitude of other cases, on various 
subjects. 'One powerful, but little suspected cause, I take to 
be, an early familiarity with poetical descriptions of pure, unso- 
phisticated, rustic life, in remote, sequestered, and unenlightened 
districts; — of the manly virtue and practical wisdom of our 
simple forefathers, before the refinements of luxury had been 
introduced ; — of the adventurous wildness, so stimulating to the 
imagination, of savage or pastoral life, in the midst of primseval 
forests, lofty mountains, and all the grand scenery of unculti- 
vated nature. Such subjects and scenes are much better 
adapted for poets, than thronged cities, workshops, coalpits, 
and iroii-foundries. And poets, whose object is to please, of 
course keep out of sight all the odious or disgusting circum- 
stances pertaining to the life of the savage or the untutored 
clown, and dwell exclusively on all the amiable and admirable 
parts of that simplicity of character which they feign or fancy. 
Early associations are thus formed, whose influence is often the 
stronger and the more lasting, from the very circumstance 
that they are formed tinconsciously, and do not come in the form 
of propositions demanding a deliberate assent. Poetry does 
not profess to aim at conviction ; but it often leaves impressions 
which affect the reasoning and the judgment. And a false 
impression is perhaps oftener conveyed in other ways than by 
sophistical argument ; because that rouses the mind to exert its 
powers, and to assume, as it were, a reasoning mood." 

The influence exercised by such works is overlooked by those 
who suppose that a child's character, moral and intellectual, is 
formed by those books only which are put into his hands with 
that design. As hardly anything can accidentally touch the 
soft clay without stamping its mark on it, so, hardly any reading 
can interest a child without contributiug in some degree, though 
the book itself be afterwards totally forgotten, to form the cha- 
racter ; and the parents, therefore, who, inerely requiring from 



' In an article in a Review I have seen mention made of a person who discov- 
ered the falsity of a certain doctrine (which, by the way, is nevertheless a true 
one, that of Malthus), instinctively. This kind of instinct, i. e. the habit of fonn- 
■ing opinions at the suggestion rather of feeling than of reason, is very common. 



Essay 1.] Annotations. 467 

him a certain coiii*se of study ^ pay little or no attention to story- 
books, or educating liim they know not how. 

And here, I would observe that in books designed for 
children, there are two extremes that should be avoided. The 
one, that reference to religious principles in connection with 
matters too trifling and undignified, arising from a well-inten- 
tioned zeal, causing a forgetfulness of the maxim whose 
notorious truth has made it proverbial, ^ Too much familiarity 
breeds contempt.' And the other is the contrary, and still more 
prevailing, extreme, arising from a desire to preserve a due 
reverence for religion, at the expense of its useful application in 
conduct. But a line may be drawn which will keep clear of 
both extremes. We should not exclude the association of 
tilings sacred with M'hatever are to ourselves trifling matters, 
(for '■ these little things are great' to children), but, with what- 
ever is viewed by them as trifling. Everything is great or 
small in reference to the. parties concerned. The private 
concerns of any obscure individual are very insignificant to the 
world at large, but they are of great importance to himself. 
And all worldly aflfairs must be small in the sight of the Most 
High ; but irreverent familiarity is engendered in the mind of 
any one, then, and then only, when things sacred are associated 
with such as are, to him, insignificant things. 

And here I would add that those works of fiction are worse 
than unprofitable that inculcate morality, with an exclusion of 
all reference to religious principle. This is obviously and noto- 
riously the character of Miss Edgeworth's moral tales. And 
so*enlire and resolute is this exclusion, that it is maintained at 
the expense of what may be called poetical truth : it destroys, 
in many instances, the probability of the tale, and the natural- 
ness of the charactei-s. That Christianity does exist, every one 
must believe as an incontrovertible truth; nor can any one deny 
that, whether true or false, it does exercise, — at least is supposed 
to exercise, — an influence on the feelings and conduct of some 
of the believers in it. To represent, therefore, persons of 
various ages, sex, country, and station in life, as practising, on 
the most trying occasions, every kind of duty, and encountering 
every kind of danger, difiiculty, and hardship, while none of 
them ever makes the least reference to a religious motive, is as 
decidedly at variance with reality — what is called in works of 



468 Of Studies. [Essay I. 

• 
fiction tmnatural — as it would be to represent Maliomet''& 
enthusiastic followers as rushing into battle without any thought 
of his promised paradise. This, therefore, is a blemish in ^o'lnt 
of art, which every reader possessing taste must perceive, what- 
ever may be liis religious or non-religious persuasion. But a 
far higher, and more important, question than that of taste is 
involved. For though Miss Edgeworth may entertain opinions 
which would not permit her, with consistency, to attribute more 
to the influence of religion than she has done, and in that case 
may stand acquitted, inforo conse'mitice, of wilfully suppressing 
anything which she acknowledges to be true and important; 
yet, as a writer, it must still be considered as a great blemish, 
in the eyes at least of those who think diflferently, that virtue 
should be studiously inculcated, with scai'cely any reference to 
what they regard as the mainspring of it — that vice should be 
traced to every other source except the want of religious 
principle — that the most radical change from worthlessness to 
excellence should be represented as wholly independent of that 
Agent, which they consider as the only one that can accomplish 
it — and that consolation under affliction should be i"«^presented 
as derived from every source, except the one which they look to 
as the only true and sure one. ' Is it not because there is no 
God in Israel, that ye have sent to inquire of Baalzebub, the 
God of Ekron V This vital defect in such works should be 
constantly pointed out to the young reader ; and he should be 
warned that, to realize the picture of noble, disinterested, 
thorough-going virtue, presented in such and such an instance, 
it is absolutely necessary to resort to those principles whicl^ in 
these fictions are unnoticed. He should, in short, be reminded 
that all these 'things that are lovely and of good report,' which 
have been placed before him, are the genuine fruits of the Holy 
Land ; though the spies who have brought them bring also an 
evil report of that land, and would persuade us to remain wan- 
dering in the wilderness. 

The student of history, also, should be on his guard against 
the indirect influence likely to be exercised on his opinions. On 
this point I take the liberty of quoting a passage from my 
Lectures on Political Economy : — 

'An injudicious reader of history is liable to be misled by 



Essay 1.] Annotations. 469 

tlae cireumstance, tliat historians and travellers occupy them- 
selves principally (as is natural) with the relation of whatever is 
minarlmhU^ and different fi-oni wlut commonly takes place in 
their own time or conntiy. They do not dwell on the ordinary 
transactions of human life (which are precisely what furnish the 
•data on whi«h political-economy proceeds), but on everything 
that appears an exception to general rules, and in any way such 
iis could not have been anticipated. The sort of inibrmation 
wliich the political-economist wants is introduced, for the most 
part, cniy incidentally and obliqnely ; and is to be collected, 
imperfectly, from scattered allusions. So that if you will give 
a rapid glance, tor instance, at the history of these islands from 
tiie time of the Norman conquest to the present day, you will 
find that the differences between tlie two states of the country, 
in most of th-e jwints with which our science is conversant, are 
but very imperfectly accounted lor in the main outline of the 
jiarrative. 

If it were possible that we could have a full report of the 
common business and common conversation, in the markets, 
the shops, and the wharfs of Athens and Piraeus, for a single 
day, it would probably tlnnaw more light on the .state of things 
in Greece at that time, in all that political-economy is most 
concerned with, than all the histories that are extant put 
together. 

* Tliere i-s a danger, therefore, that the mind of the student, 
who proceeds in the manner I have described, may have been 
even drawn off from tiie class of facts which are, for the pur- 
pose in question, most important to be attended to. 

'■ For, it should be observed that, in all studies there is a 
danger to be guarded against, which Bacon, w^ith his usual 
acuteness has pointed out: that most men are so anxious to 
make or seek for, some application of what they have been 
learning, as not unfrequently to apply it improperly, by endea- 
vouring, lest their knowledge should lie by them idle, to bring 
it to bear on some question to which it is irrelevant ; like 
Horace's painter, who, being skilful in drawing a cypress, was 
for introducing one into the picture of a shipwn'cck. Bacon 
complains of this tendency among the logicians and metaphy- 
sicians of his day, who introduced an absurd and pernicious 
application of the studies in which they had been conversant, 
40 



470 Of Studies, [Essay I. 

into natural philosopliy : ' Artis saepe ineptns fit nsus, ne sit 
nullusJ' But the same clanger besets those conversant in every 
other study likewise (political economy of course not excepted), 
that may from time to time have occupied a large share of each 
man's attention. He is tempted to seek for a solution of every 
question on every subject, by a reference to his own favourite 
science or branch of knowledge ; like a schoolboy w^hen first 
entrusted with a knife, who is for trying its edge on everything 
that comes in his way. 

' Now in reference to the point immediately before us, he 
who is well read in history and in travels, should be warned of 
the danger (the more on account of the real high importance 
of such knowledge) of misapplying it ; — of supposing that be- 
cause political economy is conversant w'ith human transactions^ 
and he is acquainted with so much greater an amount of hfuman. 
transactions than the generality of men, he must have an ad- 
vantage over them in precisely the same degree, in discussing 
questions of political economy. Undoubtedly he has a great 
advantage, if he is careful to keep in view the true principles 
of the science ; but otherwise he may even labour under a dls- 
advantage, by forgetting that (as I just now observed) the kind 
of transactions which are made most prominent, and occupy the 
chief space, in tlie works of historians and travellers, are usually 
not those of every -day life, with wliich political economy is con- 
versant. It is in the same way that an accurate military survey 
of any district, or a series of sketches accompanying a picturesque 
tour through it, may even serve to mislead one who is seeking 
for a knowledge of its agricultui'al condition, if he does not 
keep in mind the diiferent objects which diiferent kinds of sur- 
vey have in view\ 

' Geologists, wdien commissioning their friends to procure 
them from any foreign country such specimens as may convey 
an idea of its geological character, are accustomed to warn them 
against sending over collections of cui'iosiiies — i. e. specimens 
of spars, stalactites, &c., which are accounted, in that country, 
curious, from being rarities, and which consequently convey no 
correct notion of its general features. What they want is, 
specimens of the commonest strata, — ^the stones with which the 
roads are mended, and the houses built, &c. And some frag- 
ments of these, which in that country are accounted mere 



Essay 1.] Amwtatlons. 471 

rubbish, they sometimes, with much satisfaction, fiud casually 
adhering to the specimens sent them as curiosities, and consti- 
tuting, foi*heir object, the most important part of the collec- 
tion. Histories are in general, to the political economist, what 
such collections are to the geologist. The casual allusions to 
common, and what are considered insignificant matters, convey, 
to liim, the most valuable information. 

'An injudicious study of liistory, then, may even prove an 
liindrance Instead of a help to the forming of right views of 
political economy. For not only are many of the transactions 
wliich are, in the liistorian's view, the most important, such as 
are the least important to the political economist, but also a 
great proportion of them consists of wdiat are in reality the 
greatest impediments to the progress of a society in wealth ; viz. 
ware, revolutions, and disturbances of every kind. It is not in 
consequence of tliese, but in spite of them, that society has 
made the progress which in fact it has made. So tliat in 
taking such a siu-vey as history furnishes of the course of 
events, for instance, for the last eight hundred yeai"s (the period 
I just now alluded to), not only do we find little mention of the 
causes which have so greatly increased national wealth during 
that period, but what we cliiefly do read of is, the counteracting 
causes ; especially the wars which have been raging from time 
to time, to the destruction of capital, and the hindi-ance of 
improvement, Now, If a ship had performed a voyage of eight 
hundred leagues, and the register of it contained an account 
chiefly of the contrary winds and currents, and made little 
mention of favourable gales, we might well be at a loss to under- 
stand how she reached her destination ; and might even be led 
into the mistake of supposing that the contrary winds had for- 
warded her in her course. Yet such is histoiy !' 

In reference to the study of history, I have elsewhere 
remarked upon the importance, among the intellectual quali- 
fications for such a study, of a vivid imagination, — a faculty 
which, consequently, a skilful narrator must liimself possess, 
and to which he must be able to furnish excitement in others. 
Some may, perhaps, be startled at this remark, who have been 
accustomed to consider imagination as having no other office 
than to feign and to falsify. Every faculty is liable to abuse 
and misdirection, and imagination among the rest ; but it is a 



472 Of Studies. [Essay L 

mistake to suppose tliat it necessarilj^ tends to pervert the 
truth of history, and to mislead the judgment. O^ the con- 
trary, our view of any transaction, especially one that is remote 
in time or place, will necessarily be imperfect, generally in- 
correct, unless it embrace something more than the bare outline 
of the occurrences, — unless we have before the mind a lively 
idea of the scenes in which the events took place, the habits of 
tliought and of feeling of the actors, and all the circumstances 
comiected with the transaction ; unless, in short, we can in a 
considerable degree transport ourselves out of our own age, and 
country, and persons, and imagine ourselves the agents or 
spectators. It is from consideration of all these circumstances 
that we are enabled to form a right judgment as to the facts 
wliich history records, and to derive instruction from it. "What 
we imagine may indeed be merely imaginar'y, that is, um'eal ; 
but it may again be what actually does or did exist. To say 
that imagination, if not regulated by sound judgment and suffi- 
cient knowledge, may chance to convey to us false impressions 
of past events, is only to say that Man is fallible. But such 
false impressions are even much the mwe likely to take pos- 
session of those whose imagination is feeble or uncultivated. 
They are apt to imagine the things, persons, times, countries, 
&c., which they read of, as nnich less diiferent from what they 
see around them than is really the case. 

The practical importance of such an exercise of imagination 
to a full, and clear, and consequently profitable view of the trans- 
actions related in history, can hardly be over-estimated. In 
respect of the very earliest of all human transactions, it is 
matter of common remark how prone many are to regard with 
mingled wonder, contempt, and indignation, the transgression 
of our tirst parents ; as if they were not a fair sample of the 
human race ; as if any of us would not, if he had been placed 
in precisely the same circumstances, have acted as they did. 
The Corinthians, probably, had perused with the same barren 
wonder the history of the backslidings of the Israelites ; and 
needed that Paul should remind them, that these things were 
written for their example and admonition. And all, in almost 
every portion of history they read, have need of a corresponding 
warning, to endeavour to fancy themselves the persons they 
1-ead of, that they may recognise in the accounts of past times 



Essay L] Annotations. 473 

tlie portraiture of our owni. From not putting ourselves in the 
place of the persons living in past times, and entering fully 
into all their feelings, we are apt to forget how probable many 
things might appear, which we know did not take place ; and 
to regard as perfectly chimerical, expectations which we know 
were not realized, but which, had we lived in those times, we 
should doubtless have entertained ; and to imagine that there 
was no danger of those evils which were, in fact, escaped. We 
are apt also to make too little allowances for prejudices and 
associations of ideas, which no longer exist precisely in the 
same form among ourselves, but which, perhaps, are not more 
at variance with right reason than others with which ourselves 
are infected. 

' Studies sei'^e for delight^ for ornament^ and for ability.^ 

"We should, then, cultivate, not only the corn-fields of our 
minds, but the pleasure-grounds also. Every faculty and every 
study, however worthless they may be, when not employed in 
the service of God, — however debased and polluted when de- 
voted to the service of sm, — become ennobled and sanctified 
when directed, by one whose constraining motive is the love of 
Christ, towards a good object. Let not the Christian then 
think ' scorn of the pleasant land.' That land is the field of 
ancient and modern literature — of philosophy, in almost all its 
departments — of the arts of reasoning and persuasion. Every 
part of it may be cultivated witli advantage, as the Land of 
Canaan when bestowed upon God's peculiar people. They were 
not commanded to let it lie waste, as incurably polluted by the 
abominations of its first inhabitants ; but to cultivate it, and 
dwell in it, living in obedience to the divine laws, and dedica- 
ting its choicest fruits to the Lord their God. 
40* 



ESSAY LI. OF FACTION. 

"jl/jTANY have an opinion not wise, that for a prince to govern 
-^-^ his estate/ or for a great person to govern his proceedings, 
according to the respect to factions, is a principal part of policy. 
Mdiereas, contrariwise,'^ the chiefest^ wisdom is, either in ordering 
those things which are general, and wherein men of several 
factions do nevertheless agree, or in dealing with correspondence 
to particular persons one by one. But I say not that the con- 
sideration of factions is to be neglected. Mean men, in their 
rising, must adhere ; but great men, that have strength in them- 
selves, were better to maintain themselves indifferent* and 
neutral ; yet even in beginners, to adhere so moderately, as he 
be a man of the one faction, which is most passable' with the 
other, commonly giveth best way. Tlie lower and weaker 
faction is the firmer in conjunction ; and it is often seen, that a 
few that are stiff, do tire out a greater number that are more 
moderate. AVhen one of the factions is extinguished, the 
remaining subdivideth ; as the faction between Lucullus and 
the rest of the nobles of the senate (which they called optimates) 
held out awhile against the faction of Pompey and Csesar ; but 
when the Senate's authority was pulled down, Csesar and 
Pompey soon after brake. The faction, or party, of Antonius 
and Octavius Caesar against Brutus and Cassius, held out 
likewise for a time ; but when Brutus and Cassius were over- 
tlirown, then soon after Antonius and Octavius brake and 
subdivided. These examples are of wars, but the same holdeth 
in private factions ; and, therefore, those that are seconds in 
factions, do many times, when the faction subdivideth, prove 
principals ; but many times also they prove cyphers and 
cashiered ; for many a man's strength is in opposition, and 
when that faileth, he groweth out of use. It is commonly 
seen, that men once placed, take in with the contrary faction 



' Estate. State. See page 119, 
^ Contrariwise. On the contrary. See page 82. 

^ Chiefest. Chief. ' Not a whit behind the very chiefest Apostles.' — 2 Cor. xi. 5. 
' Antioehus the Great 
Built up this city as his chiefest seat.' — Shakspere. 
* Indifferent. See page 192. 

' Passable. Capable of being received. ' It is with men as with false money ; 
one piece is more or less passable than another.' — L' Estrange. 



Essay li.] Of Faction. 475 

to that by wliicli tliey enter : tliinking, belike/ that they have 
their first sure, and now are ready for a new purchase. The 
traitor in faction lightly^ goeth away wdth it, for when matters 
have stuck long in balancing, the winning of some one man 
casteth them, and he getteth all the thanks. Tlie even carriage 
between two factions proceedeth not always of moderation, but 
of a trueness to a man's self, with end to make use of both. 
Certainly, in Italy, they hold it a little suspect' in popes, when 
they have often in their mouth, 'Padre commune;" and take 
it to be a sign of one that meaneth to refer all to the greatness 
of his own house. Kings had need beware how they side* 
themselves, and make themselves as of a faction or party; for 
leagues within the State are ever pernicious to monarchies ; for 
they raise an obligation paramount to obligation of sovereignty, 
and make the king ' tanquam unus ex nobis ;" as was to be 
seen in the league of France. When factions are carried too 
high and too violently, it is a sign of weakness in princes, and 
much to the prejudice both of their authority and business. 
Tlie motions of factions under kings ought to be like the mo- 
tions (as the astronomers speak) of the inferior orbs, which may 
have their proper motions, but yet still are quietly carried by 
the higher motion of ' primum mobile." 



ANNOTATIONS, 

Bacon's remark, that a prince ought not to make it his policy 
to ' govern according to respect to facti&ns^^ suggests a strong 
ground of preference of hereditary to elective sovereignty. For 
when a chief — whether called king, emperor, president, or by 
whatever name — is elected (whether for life, or for a term of 



* Belike. Probably, ' Tliat good Earl of Huntingdon, who well esteemed my 
father ; having belike, heard some better words of me than I could deserve ; made 
earnest enquiry after me.' — Bishop Hall. 

^ Lightly. Easily ; readily. 

' Believe 't not lightly that your son 
Will not exceed the common.' — Shahespere. 
' Of. From. See page 247. 

* Suspect. Suspicious. ' Certes, it is to mee suspect.' — Chaucer. 

* ' Common-Father.' 

' Side. To take a side. ' As soon as discontents drove men into siding.' 

' 'As one of us.' * Primum mobile. See p. 125. 



476 Of Fadion. , [Essay li. 

years), he can hardly avoid being tJie head of a party, ' He 
who is elected will be likely to feel aversion towards those who 
have voted against him ; who may be, perhaps, nearly half of 
his subjects. And they again will be likely to regard him as 
an enemy ^ instead of feeling loyalty to him as their prince. 

' And those again who have votedybr him, will consider him 
as being under an obligation to them, and expect him to show 
them more favour than to the rest of his subjects ; so that he 
will be rather the head of a party than the king of a people. 

'Tlien, too, when the throne is likely to become vacant — 
that is, when the king is old, or is attacked with any serious 
illness, — what secret canvassing and disturbance of men's minds 
will take place. The king himself will most likely wish that 
his son, or some other near relative or friend, should succeed 
him, and he will employ all his patronage with a view to such 
an election ; appointing to public offices not the fittest men, 
but those whom he can reckon on as voters. And others will 
be exerting themselves to form a party against him; so that 
the country will be hardly ever tranquil, and very seldom well- 
governed. 

' If, indeed, men were very different from what they are, there 
might be superior advantages in an elective royalty ; but in 
the actual state of things, the disadvantages will in general 
greatly outweigh the benefits. 

' Accordingly most nations have seen the advantage of here- 
ditary royalty, notwithstanding the defects of such a consti- 
tution." 

'■Kings had need heware Jtoiv they side themselves.^ 

The observation, that kings who make themselves members 
of a party, ' raise an obligatfon paramount to an obligation of 
sovereignty' — that is, are likely to substitute party-spirit for 
public-spirit, — is one which applies in a great degree to all par- 
tizans, and to all parties, whether political or ecclesiastical. 
We see in Thucydides' History of the Pelojyonnesian War (and 
the like has been seen in many ages and regions) how much the 
attachment to the democratic or the oligarchical parties pre- 
vailed over Patriotism. And in religious concerns, attachment 
to some party will often be found overcoming that to a church ; 



Lesson I,, On the British Constitution, pp. 15, 16. 



Essay li.] Annotations. 477 

so that men belonging to diiferent, and even avowedly opposed 
churches, will sometimes he found combined in bitter hostility 
against other members of their own respective churches, who 
are not of their religious party. 

On any point, indeed, which the State, or the Church, has left 
as an oj.>en question, allowing each person to judge and act 
therein as he may think fit, — on such a point, a man may per- 
haps find himself differing from some inflividuals who belong to 
his own community, and in agreement with some who do not ; 
and he is not precluded from joining with these latter in for- 
warding some definite object in wdiich they agree. For instance, 
the question of 'Free-trade or Protection' is not involved in 
the British Constitution, and is one on which loyal subjects may 
differ. And any one who advocates Free-trade might allow- 
ably join ^dth some foreigners of the same opinion, in circulat- 
ing tracts in favour of it. So also, a member of some Protestant 
church might chance to agree with the late Pope Gregory on 
the subject of Slavery, disagreeing on that point with some 
fellow-members of his own church, which has pronounced no 
decision thereon : and he may, accordingly, join witli some 
Roman-catholics in discountenancing Slavery, 

But most watchful care is requisite, to guard against being 
imperceptibly led on, without any such design originally, into 
enrolling oneself in a party, jprojyeiiy so called, (in Bacon's 
language, a faction) ; that is, a combination formed indefinitely 
for the advocacy of certain general principles, and the promo- 
tion of a certain class of objects, without a distinct specification 
of each precise object to be arrived at, and of the means to be 
employed ; so that the members of the party do, in fact, place 
themselves under the guidance of their leaders, without any 
exact knowledge whither they will be led.' 

. ' The even carriage letween two factions jproceedetli not always 
of moderation, hut of a trueness to a man''s self with end to 
radke use of hoth.'' 

And thorough-going partizans usually attribute this to every 
one who keeps aloof from Party ; or else they suspect him of 



' See the Essay, ' Of Unity in Religion.' See also, Essay II., 4th Series, § 3, on 
Party-Spirit.' 



478 Of Faction. [Essay li. 

seeking to set up some new party, in wliicli he may be a leader ; 
or they regard him as a whimsical being, who differs hi ojnnion 
from everybody. 

From one or other of these causes, he is regarded with at least 
as much hostility by the most zealous party -men, as those of an 
ojDposite party. And accordingly, Thucydides, in describing the 
party-contests at Corcyra and other Greek States, remarks that 
' those who held a middle coarse were destroyed by both parties.' 

And it is remarkable that party-spirit tends so much to 
lower the moral standard, that it makes men regard with less 
abhorrence what is wrong, not only on their own side, but even 
on the opposite. Their feelings towards those of the opposed 
party are very much those of soldiers towards the soldiers of 
the hostile army. He fires at them for that reason alone, and 
expects that they should fire at Mm. If they fight bravely, or 
if they out-manojuvre him, he admires their courage or their 
skill. He does not think the worse of them for reckless plun- 
dering, ravaging, and slaughtering, just as he would do in their 
place, and as he does, on the opposite side. Even so, the most 
thorough-going partisans attribute to every one who is, or is 
supposed to be (often without any good grounds) a member of 
the opposite party, such conduct as is in reality unjustifiable, 
w^ithout thinking at all the worse of him for it. It is only what 
they would do in his place : and though they dislike him for 
heing of the opposite j>arty, they dislike him for nothing else. 

Tlie effects, of party-spirit in lowering the moral standard are 
gradual, and usually rather slow. But it often happens, on the 
occasion of some violent party-contest, that an apparently 
sudden change will take place in men's characters; and we are 
surprised by an unexpected outbreak of unscrupulous baseness, 
cruel injustice, and extravagant folly. In such cases, however, 
there can be litttle doubt that the evil dispositions thus displayed 
were lurking in the breasts of the individuals before unknown 
by themselves and by those around them, and are merely called 
into activity by the ^occasion ; even as a storm of wind raises 
the dust which it did not create. According to the proverb/ 

' The pond that when stirred does muddy appear, 
Had mud at the bottom when still and clear.' 



See Proverbs and Precepts. 



ESSAY LIL OF CEREMONIES AND 
RESPECTS.^ 

TTE that is only real had need have exceeding great parts of 
J—"- virtue, as the stone had need to be ricli that is set without 
foil ; but if a man mark it well, it is in praise and commenda- 
tion of men as it is in gettings and gains ; for the proverb is 
true, ' That light gains make heavy purses,' for light gains come 
thick, whereas great come but now and then ; so it is true, that 
small matters win great commendation, because they are con- 
tinually in nse and in note, whereas the occasion of any great 
virtue cometh but on festivals. Therefore it doth much add to 
a man's reputation, and is (as Queen Isabella said) like per- 
petual letters commendatory, to have good forms. To attain 
them, it almost sufficeth not to despise them ; for so shall a 
man observe them in others, and let him trust himself with the 
rest : for if he labour too much to express them, he shall lose 
their grace, which is to be natural and unaffected. Some men's 
behaviour is like a verse, wherein every syllable is measured. 
How can a man comprehend great matters, that breaketh his 
mind too much to small observations V Not to use cerempnies 
at all, is to teach others not to use them again, and so diminish 
respect to himself; especially they are not to be omitted to 
strangers and formal natures ; but the dwelling upon them, and 
exalting them above the moon, is not only tedious, but both 
diminish the faith and credit of him that speaks ; and, certainly, 
there is a kind of conveying of effectual and imprinting' passages 
amongst compliments, which is of singular use, if a man can hit 
npon it. Amongst a man's peers a man shall be sure of fami- 
liarity, and therefore it is good a little to keep state ; amongst 

^ Ceremonies and respects. Conventional forms of politeness, and rules of 
etiquette. 

' Tlie sauce to meat is ceremony ; 
Meeting were bare without it.' — Shakespere. 
' What art thou, thou idle ceremony ? 



Art tliou aught else but place, degree and form ?' — Shakespere. 
'The Duke's carriage to the gentlemen was of fair respects' — Wotton. 
" Observations. Observances. ' He freed the christian Church from the 
external observation.' — White. 
' Imprinting. Impressive, 



480 Of Ceremonies and Eesjyects. [Essay lii. 

a man's inferiors one shall be sure of reverence, and therefore 
it is good a little to be familiar. lie that is too much in any 
thing, so that he giveth another occasion of satiety, niaketh him- 
self cheap. To apply one's self to others is good, so it be with 
demonstration, that a man doth it upon' regard and not upon 
facility. It is a good precept generally in seconding another, 
yet to add somewhat of one's own ; as if you w^ll grant his 
opinion, let it be with some distinction ; if you will follow his 
motion, let it be with condition ; if you allow his counsel, let it 
be with alleging farther reason. Men had need beware how 
they be too perfect in compliments, for be they never so suffi- 
cient'' otherwise, their enviers will be sure to give them that 
attribute, to the disadvantage of their greater virtues. It is loss 
also in business to be too full of respects, or to be too curious^ 
in observing times and opportunities. Solomon saith, ' lie that 
considereth the wind shall not sow, and he that looketh to the 
clouds shall not reap.'* A wise man will make more opportu- 
nities than he finds. Men's behaviour should be like their 
apparel, not too strait or point device,^ but free for exercise or 
motion. 

ANTITHETA ON CEREMONIES AND RESPECTS. 
Pro. Contea. 

' Si et in verbis vulgo paremus, ' Quid deformius, quam scenam in 

quidni in habitu, et gestu ? vitam transferre ? 

' If loe accommodate ourselves to the ' What can be more disgusting than to 

vulgar in our speech, why not also in transfer the stage into common life ?' 
our deportment ? 

' Magis placent cerussatse bueese, et 

'Virtus et prudentia sine pi;nctis, calamistrata coma, quam cerussati et 
velut peregrinaj linguie sunt ; nam vulgo calamistrati mores. 
non intelliguntur. ' Rouged cheeks and curled hair are 

' Virtue and wisdom without forms of less offensive than rouged a7id curled 
politeness are strange languages, for manners' 
they are not ordinarily understood.' 

'Puncti translatio sunt virtutis in 
linguam vernaculam. 

' Forms are the translation of virtue 
into the vulgar tongue.' 



' Upon. In consequence of See page 437. 

* Sufficient. Able. ' Who is sufficient for these things?'— 2 Cor. ii. 16. 

' Curious. Exact; precipe. 'Both these senses embrace their objects with a 
more curious discrimination.' — Holder. * Eccles. xi. 4. 

* Point device. Extremely exact (with the nicety and precision of a stitch, 
(French point) devised or made with the needle). ' Everything about you should 
demonstrate a careless desolation ; but you are rather point de vise in your accoutre- 
^ments, as loving yourself, than the lover of another.' — Shakespere. 



Essay lii.] Annotations. 481 



ANNOTATIONS. 

Good manners are a part of good morals ; and when form is 
too much neglected, true politeness suifers diminution ; then we 
are obliged to bring some back ; or we find the want of them. 
The same holds good in a higher department. Mankind are 
not formed to live without ceremony and form : the ' inward 
spiritual grace' is very apt to be lost without the ' external 
visible sign.' Many are continually setting up for the expulsion 
of ceremonies from this or that, and often with advantage, when 
they have so multiplied as to grow burdensome ; but, if ever 
they have carried this too far, they have been forced to bring 
back some ceremonies. Upon the whole, we may conclude that 
cereniony and form of every kind derive their necessity from our 
imperfection. If we were perfectly spiritual, we miglit worship 
God without any form at all, without even uttering words ; as 
we are not, it is a folly to say, ' One may be just as pious on 
one day as another, in one place, or posture, as another,' &c., I 
answer, angels may ; Man cannot. Again, if we were all per- 
fectly benevolent, good-tempered, attentive to the gratifying of 
others, &c., we might dispense with all the forms of good- 
breeding ; as it is, we cannot ; we are not enough of heroes to 
fight without discipline. Selfishness will be sure to assail us 
if we once let the barriers be broken down. At the same time 
it is evident from what has been said, that the higher our nature 
is carried^ the lessforin we need. 

But though we may aeservedly congratulate society on being 
able to dispense with this or that ceremony, do not let us be in. 
a hurry to do so, till we are sure we can do without it. It is 
taking away crutches, to cure the gout. The opposite extreme 
of substituting the external form for the thing signified, is not 
more dangerous or more common than the neglect of that form. 
It is all very well to say, ' There is no use in bidding good- 
morrow or good-night, to those who know I wish it ; of sending 
one's love, in a letter, to those who do not doubt it,' &c. All 
this sounds very well in theory, but it will not do for practice. 
Scarce any friendship, or any politeness, is so strong as to be 
able to subsist without any external supports of this kind ; and 
it is even better to have too much form than too little. 

41 HH 



482 Of Ceremonies and Resjpeds. [Essay lii. 

It is worth observing in reference to conventional forms, that 
the ' vernacular tongue,' in which the forms of civility are ex- 
pressed, differs in different times and places. For instance, in 
Spain it is a common form of civility to ask a man to dinner, 
and for the other to reply, ' Sure you would not think of such 
a thing.' To accept a first or second invitation would be as 
gi'eat a blunder as if, among us, any one who signed himself 
' your obedient servant' should be taken literally, and desired 
to perform some menial ofiice. K a Spanish gentleman really 
means to ask you to dinner, he repeats the invitation a third 
time : and then he is to be understood literally. 

Serious errors may, of course, arise in opposite ways, by not 
understanding aright what is and is not to be taken as a mere 
complimentary form. 



ESSAY LIII. OF PRAISE. 

* T) RAISE is tlie reflection of virtue,' but it is as tlie glass, or 
-L body, which giveth the reflection ; if it be from the com- 
mon people, it is commonly false and naught,' and rather fol- 
ioweth vain pei-sons than virtiious : for the common people un- 
derstand not many excellent virtues : the lowest virtues draw 
praise from them, the middle virtues work in them astonish- 
ment or admii-ation ; but of the highest virtues they have no 
sense or perceiving" at all ; but shows, and ' species virtutibus 
similes" serve best with them. Certainly fame is like a river, 
that beareth up things light and swollen, and drowns things 
weighty and solid; but if pei-sons of quality and judgment 
concur, then it is (as the scripture saitli) ' Nomen bonum instar 
unguenti fragrantis ;'* it iilleth all round about, and will not 
easily away ;' for the odoui-s of ointments are more durable than 
those of flowers. 

There be so many false points of praise, that a man may 
justly hold it in suspect." Some praises proceed merely of flat- 
tery ; and if it be an ordinary flatterer, he Avill have certain 
common attributes, which may serve every man ; if he be a 
cunning flatterer, he w^ill follow the arch-flatterer, which is a 
man's self, and wherein a man thinketli best of himself, therein 
the flatterer will uphold him most : but if he be an impudent 
flatterer, look wherein a man is conscious to himself that he is 
most defective, and is most out of countenance in himself, that 
will the flatterer entitle him to, perforce, ' Spreta conscientia." 
Some praises come of good wishes and respects, which is a form 
due in civility to kings and great persons, ' laudando prsecipere ;" 
when by telling them what they are, they represent to them 



' Naught. Worthless ; dispicable. See page 344. 

" Perceiving. Perception. ' Appearances like virtues. 

4 'A good name is like a fragrant ointment' — Secies, vii. 1. 

* Away. Pass away. 

' I have a pain upon my forehead here, 
Why that's with watching ; 'twill away again.' — Shnkespere. 
' Suspect. Suspicion. '' ' Despising conscience.' 

* To instruct in praising. 



484 Of Praise. [Essay liii. 

what tliej should be. Some men are praised maliciously to 
their hurt, thereby to stir envy and jealousy towards them ; 
' pessimum genus inimicorum laudantium ;" insomuch as it was 
a proverb amongst the Grecians, that ' He that was praised to his 
hurt, should have a push^ rise upon his nose ;' as we say, that 
a blister will rise upon one's tongue that tells a lie. Certainly 
moderate praise used with opportunity, and not vulgar, is that 
which doeth the good. Solomon saith, ' He that praiseth his 
friend aloud, rising early, it shall be to him no better than a 
curse." Too much magnifying of man or matter doth irritate 
contradiction, and procure envy and scorn. To praise a man's 
self, cannot be decent, except it be in rai*e cases ; but to praise 
a man's office or profession, he may do it with good grace, and 
with a kind of magnanimity. The cardinals of Kome, which 
are theologues," and friars, and schoolmen, have a phrase of 
notable* contempt and scorn towards civil business ; for they 
call all temporal business of wars, embassages, judicature, and 
other employments, sherrerie, which is under sheriffries, as if 
they were but matters for under-sheriffs and catch-poles; though 
many times those under-sheriffries do more good than their high 
speculations. St. Paul, when he boasts of himself, doth oft inter- 
lace, ' I speak like a fool ;" but speaking of his calling, he saith, 
' Magnificabo apostolatum meum." 

ANTITHETA ON PRAISE. 

Pro. Contra. 

' Virtutis radii reflexi laudes. ' Fama deterior judex, qiiam nuncia. 

' Praises are the reflected rays of ' Common fame is a bad messenger, but 

virtue.' a worse judge.' 

' Laus honor is est, ad quern liberis ' Fama veluti fluvius, levia attollit, 

suffragiis pervenitur. solida mergit. 

' Praise is that kind of honor which is ' Fame, like a river, bears up what is 

conferred by free votes.' light, and sinks what is solid.' 

' Honores diverse a diversis politiis ' Infimarum virtutum apud Tulgus 



' ' The worst kind of enemies are those who praise.' 

' Push. A pustule ; a pimple. ° Proverbs xxrii, 14. 

* Theologue. A theologian ; a Divine. 

' A theologue more by need than genial bent.' — Dryden. 
' Notable. Remarkable. 'And they had then a notable prisoner.' — Matt. 
xxvii. 16. 

• 2 Cor. xi. 23. ' ' I magnify mine office.' — Romans. 



Essay liii.] Annotations. 485 

conferuntur; sed laudes ubique sunt laus est, mediarum admiratio, euprema- 

libertatis. ruin sensus nuUus. 

' Honours are eon/erred differently in ' The lowest of tlu. virtues the vulgar 

different governments ; hut praises every- praise ; the middle ones they admire ; 

where by popular suffrage.' of the highest they have no perceptiofi.' 

' 'Ne mireris, si vulgus verius loquatur, 
qiiam honoratiores ; quia etiam tutius 
loquitur. 

' It is HO Konder that the vulgar some- 
times speak more truly than those of 
high place, because they speak more 
safely' 



ANNOTATIONS. 



* TTie C07mnon, peof)le understand not many excellent virtues : the 
lowest virtues draw p^^aim from them, the middle virtues 
work in them astoixishnent or adiniration, hut of the highest 
virtues they have no sense or perceiving at alV 

What a pregnant remark is this! Bj the lowest of the 
virtues he means probably such as hospitality, liberality, grati- 
tude, good-humoured courtesy, and the like ; and these he says 
the common run of mankind are accustomed ifi praise. Those 
which tliey admire, such as daring courage, and firm fidelity to 
friends, or to the cause or party one has espoused, are what he 
ranks in the next highest place. But the most elevated virtues 
of all, such as disinterested and devoted public spirit, thorough- 
going even-handed justice, and disregard of unpopularity when 
duty requires, of these he says the vulgar have usually no notion. 
And he might have gone further ; for it often happens that a 
large portion of mankind not only do not praise or admire the 
highest qualities, but even censure and despise them. Cases 
may occur in which, though you may obtain the high approba- 
tion of a very few persons of the most refined and exalted moral 
sentiments, you must be prepared to find the majority (even of 
such as are not altogether bad men) condemning you as un- 
natural, unkind, faithless, and not to be depended on; or 
deriding you as eccentric, crotchety, fanciful, or absurdly scru- 
pulous. 

And this is the more likely to occur, because there are many 
41* 



486 Of Prmse. [Essay liii. 

cases in which the same conduct may result eitJier from the very- 
highest motive, or from a base one ; and then, tliose of the 
noblest character, and who are also cautious and intelligent, 
will judge from your general conduct and character vjAicA motive 
to assign ; while those who are themselves strangers to the 
highest principle, will at once attribute your acts to the basest. 
For example, if you shrink from some daring or troublesome 
undertaking which is also unjustiliable, this may be either from 
cowardice or indolence, or from scrupulous integrity ; and the 
worse motive will be at once assigned by those who have no 
notion of the better. If you are tolerant in religion, this r/ia]/ 
be either from utter carelessness, like Gallio's, or from a per- 
ception of the true character of the Gospel : and those who want 
this latter, will be sure to attribute to yon at once the other. 
If you decline supporting a countryman against foreigners when 
they have right on their side, or a friend against a stranger, 
this may be either from indiiFerence to your country, or your 
friend, or from a strong love of justice, and those who have 
but dim views of justice will at once set you down as unpatriotic 
or unfriendly. And so in many other cases. 

If, accordingly, you refuse to defend, or to deny, or to 
palliate, the faults of those engaged in a good cause, and if 
you are ready to bear testimony to whatever there may be 
that is right on the opposite side, you will be regarded by 
many as treacherous, or lukewarm, or inconsistent. If you 
advocate toleration for an erroneous faith, and protest against 
forcing, or entrapping, or bribing any persons into the profes- 
sion of a true one, many will consider you as yourself either 
tainted with error, or indifferent about religious truth. If, 
again, you consider a seat in Parliament, or any other place 
you may occupy, or the power of appointing another to such a 
place, as a sacred trust for the public service, and, therefore, 
requiring sometimes the sacrifice of private friendship, — if you 
do justice to an opponent against a friend, or to a worse man 
(when he happens to have right on his side) against a better, — 
if you refuse to support your friends, or those you have been 
accustomed to act with, or those to whom you have a personal 
obligation, when they are about doing something that is wrong, 
— ^if you decline making application in behalf of a friend to 
those who would expect you to place your votes and interest 



Essay liii.] ' Annotations. 487 

at their disposal, whether your own judgment approved of their 
measures or not, — in these and other such cases, you will be 
perhaps more blamed or despised by the generality, than com- 
mended or admired. For, party-men will usually pardon a 
zealous advocate of their party for many great faults^ more 
readily than they will pardon the virtue of standing quite aloof 
from party, and doing strict justice to all. It will often hap- 
pen, therefore, that when a man of very great real excellence 
does acquire great and general esteem, four-fifths of this will 
have been bestowed on the minor virtues of his character ; and 
four-fifths of his admirers will have either quite overlooked the 
most truly admirable of his qualities, or else regarded them as 
pardonable weaknesses. 

You should guard, then, against the opposite dangers of 
either lowering %jour own moral standard to the level of some 
of your neighbours, or judging too hardly of them. Your 
general practical rule should be, to expect more of yourself than 
of others. Of course it is not meant that a man is to think 
over-highly of himself and ' despise others.' He is not to think 
his conduct better than others', only his cajpahilities. A man 
who feels himself capable of generous and exalted conduct (I 
do not mean, feels that he shall always act thus, — for who dares 
promise himself this ? — but who feels that it is not beyond liis 
conception, or unnatural io him), when he measures others by 
his own standard, and is disappointed with them, will re- 
member that every man shall be judged 'according to that he 
hath, and not according to that he hath not.' He will feel 
that more is required of him, as being placed in a higher walk 
of duty, and will thus be even the less satisfied with his con- 
formity to so lofty a standard. But though his frequent 
failures will humble him, yet as a fair and due sense of dignity, 
which arises from a consciousness of superior station, is not 
only right, but needful, in a gentleman, a peer, or a king, to 
make them fill their stations gracefully ; so it is here : that 
proper sense of his own moral dignity, is necessary for a great 
and generous disposition, if he would act up to his character. 
The excess thereof will be checked by habits of true piety, 
which cannot but make him feel his own littleness in the 
strongest manner; and by continually asking himself 'Who 
made thee to difi'er from anotlier ?' or, ' What hast thou that 



488 Of Praise. [Essay liii. 

thou didst not receive?' lie will be guarded against despising 
his inferiors. For, generous and ungenerous pride are not only- 
different (as all would allow), but, in most points, opposite : 
a man of the former character makes allowance for others 
which he will not make for himself; the latter, allowances for 
himself, which he will not for others : he is ready enough to 
think that this, and that, is not good enough for him ; but the 
other thinks a Ijase action not good enough for him, and does 
not regard his superiority as a privilege to act in a manner 
which, in his view, would degrade him from it ; and while doing 
the most generous actions himself, as things of course, he will 
make the readiest allowance for others' deficiencies. He will 
do good without calculating upon much gratitude ; yet will be 
grateful, with most generous ardour, himself. To take any 
unfair advantages, or even to take all fair ones — to press his 
rights to the utmost — to press close to the limits of what is 
wrong, and anxiously consider whether he may be allowed to 
do this, or omit that, — he disdains, and would feel degraded by 
it. Of the virtues of such a man as this, the vulgar have in- 
deed no perception. 

He that assails error because it is error, without respect of 
persons, must be prepared for a storm from the party who were 
fanning him with the gentle breath of praise, so long as he 
had been dealing with the errors of tke party opposed to them. 
They say with the rat to the mouse (in a ludicrous poem, on a 
house much infested with rats and mice, into which a cat had 
been brought), — 

' Said the other, this cat, if she murder a rat. 
Must needs be a very great sinner. 
But to feed upon mice can't be counted a vice ; 
I myself like a mouse for my dinner.' 

*■ There are so many false points of jpi^aise? 

That censure and commendation should in so many instances 
be indiscriminate, can surprise no one who recollects how rare 
a quality discrimination is, and how much better it suits indo- 
lence, as well as ignorance, to lay down a rule, than to ascertain 
the exceptions to it. 



Essay liii.] Annotations. 489 



' SoTne praises come of good wishes.'' 

The word ' macarize' has been adopted by Oxford men who 
are familiar with Aristotle, to supply a word wanting in our 
language. ' Felicitate' and ' congratulate' are (in actual usage) 
confined to events. A man is congratulated on his marriage, 
but not on having a good wife. And sometimes ' I envy you' 
is used, when it is understood that there is no envy in the bad 
(which is the proper) sense. I believe the French sometimes 
say, ' Je vous en fais mes compliments.' It may be said that 
men are admired for what they are., commended for what they 
do., and macarized for what they have. 

Of the ' praises that come of good wishes,' none have such 
influence as the daily droppings of domestic flattery — to use the 
word flattery in the sense of undue praise merely. Laudari a 
laudato viro is what every one would prize most ; but other 
praises may make up in tale what they want in weight. 

' Certainly moderate praise, used with opportimity, and not 
vulgar, is that which doeth tlie good? 

It is worth remarking that praise is one of the things which 
almost every one must ivish for, and be glad of, yet which it is 
not allowable to seeh for as an end. To obtain the approbation 
of the wise and good, by doing what is right, simply because it 
is right, is most gratifying to the natural and allowable wish to 
escape the censure and claim the approval of our fellow 
creatures ; but to make this gratification, either wholly or 
partly our object — to hold up a finger on purpose (and for 
that sole purpose) to gain the applause of the whole world, is 
unjustifiable. 

A well-known writer acknowledged his having said what he 
did from ' a wish to be orthodox.' Now, such a toish — merely 
as a wish' — is quite natural and allowable ; for almost every one 
would prefer being on the side of the majority; and this will of 
course be, by the majority, accounted orthodoxy. But he evi- 
dently meant that he was practically influenced by the wish, — 
that he acted with a view to the reputation for orthodoxy, and 



490 Of Praise. [Essay liii. 

did not merely welcome it if it came spontaneously while lie 
was aiming simply at truth. And accordingly he had his 
reward, in becoming a great party-leader, and he abandoned 
ti-uth. 

' Ko man can serve two masters,' not because they are ne- 
cessarily at variance, but because they are two^ and do not 
necessarily draw the same way. Even worldly profit (Mammon) 
will often be secured by the same conduct as would be dictated 
by a regard for divine favour ; for ' honesty is in general the 
best policy.' But sometimes the two will pull different ways ; 
and then it is that it will appear which master a man is serving. 
Tlie desire of truth must reign supreme, and everything else be 
welcomed only if coming in her train. 

Deference for the (supposed) wise and good, and love of 
approbation, are two very distinct things, though in practice 
very diificult to be distinguished. The former may be felt to- 
wards those whom we never can meet with, — who perhaps were 
dead, ages before we were born, and survive only in their 
writings. It may be misplaced, or excessive ; but it is quite 
different from the desire of their applause or sympathy, or dread 
of their displeasure or contempt. A man's desire to find him- 
self in agreement with Aristotle, or Bacon, or Locke, or Paley, 
&c., whether reasonable or unreason^le, can have nothing to 
do with their approbation of hhn. ]^ when we are glad to 
concur with some living friends, whom we think highly of, and 
dread to differ from, then, it is very difficult to decide how far 
this feeling is \hQ, presumption formed by our judgment in favour 
of the correctness of their views, and how far it is the desire 
of their approbation and sympathy, and dread of the reverse. 
It is the desire of personal approbation, — the excessive care 
concerning what is thought of om-selves, — that we are bound 
60 severely to check. 

There is a distinction (alluded to above) between the love of 
admiration and the love of commendation, that is worth re- 
marking. The tendency of the love of commendation is to 
make a man exert himself ; of the love of admiration, to make 
him puff himself. The love of admiration leads to fraud, much 
more than the love of commendation ; but, on the other hand, 



Essay liii.] Annotations. . 491 

the latter is much more likely to spoil our good actions by the 
substitution of an inferior motive. And if we would guard 
against this, we must set ourselves resolutely to act as if we 
cared neither for praise nor censure, — for neither the bitter nor 
the sweet; and in time a man gets hardened. And this will 
always be the case, more or less, through God's help, if we will 
but persevere, and persevere from a right motive. One gets 
hardened, as the Canadians do to walking in snow shoes [raquets] ; 
at first a man is almost crippled with the ' mal au raquet' — 
the pain and swelling of the feet ; but the prescription is, to 
go on walking in them, as if you felt nothing at all ; and in a 
few days you do feel nothing. 

Much eloquence and ingenuity is often exerted, in descanting 
on the propriety of not being wholly indiiferent to the opinions 
formed of us — the impossibility of eradicating the regard for 
approbation — and the folly of attempting it, or pretending to 
it, &c. Now, this is very true ; the propensity to desire to gain 
approval and escape censure, we are not called upon to extir- 
pate (that being, I conceive, impossible) ; but our care and 
pains are better bestowed in Tceepi7ig under the feeling than 
in vindicating it. It must be treated like the grass on a 
lawn which you wish to keep in good order: you neither 
attempt, nor wish, to destroy the grass ; but you mow it down 
from time to time, as clq^e as you possibly can, well trusting 
that tli«re wall be quite enough left, and that it will be sure to 
grow again. 

One difficulty in acting upon this principle is, that it is often 
even a duty to seek the good opinion of others, not as an 
ultimate object for its own sake, but for the sake of influencing 
them for their own benefit, and that of others. ' Let your 
light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, 
and glorify your Father which is in heaven.' But we are to 
watch and analyse the motives even of actions which we are 
sure are in themselves right. ' Take heed that ye do not 
your alms before men, to be seen of them.' And this is 
a kind of vigilance, which human nature is always struggling 
to escape. One class of men are satisfied so long as they 
do what is justifiable ; — what 7nay be done from a good motive, 
and, when so done, woidd be right, and which therefore may 
be satisfactorily defended. Another class — the ascetic — are 



492 Of Praise. [Essay liii. 

for cutting off everything that may be a snare. Tliey have 
heard of ' the deceitfulness of riches,' and so they vow poverty ; 
which is less trouble than watching their motives in gaining, 
and in spending, money. And so on with the rest. But if 
we would cut ofi' all temptations, we must cut off our heads at 
once. 

Tlie praise of men is not the test of our praiseworthiness ; 
nor is their censure ; but either should set us upon testing our- 
selves. 



ESSAY LIV. OF VAIN GLORY. 

IT was prettily devised of ^sop, the fly sat upon the axle- 
tree of the chariot wheel, and said, ' What a dust do I raise !' 
So there are some vain persons, that, whatsoever goetli alone, 
or moveth upon greater means, if they have never so little hand 
in it, they think it is they that carry it. They that are 
glorious' must needs be factious ; for all bravery" stands upon 
comparisons. They must needs be violent to make good their 
own vaunts ; neither can they be secret, and therefore not 
efl:ectual ; but, according to the French proverb, heaucmip de 
Iruit, peu de fniW — much bruit," little fruit. Yet certainly, 
there is use of this quality in civil affairs : where there is an 
opinion and fame to be created, either of virtue or greatness, 
these men are good trumpeters. Again, as Titus Livius* noteth, 
in the case of Antiochus and the -^tolians, there are sometimes 
great effects of^ cross lies, as if a man that negotiates between 
two princes, to draw them to join in a war against a third, doth 
extol the forces of either of them above measure, the one to 
the other: and sometimes he that deals between man and 
man raiseth his own credit with both, by pretending greater 
interest than he hath in either; and in these, and the like 
kinds, it often falls out, that somewhat is produced of nothing ; 
for lies are sufiicient to breed opinion, and opinion brings on 
substance. 

In military commanders and soldiers, vain glory is an es- 
sential point; for as iron sharpens iron, so by glory° one 
courage sharpeneth another. In cases of great enterprise upon'' 



^ Glorious. Boastful. See page 43Y. 
' Bravery. Ostentation. See page 362. 

' Bruit. Noise; report. ('This proverb has its parallel in the English one, 
♦ Great cry and little wool.') ' All that hear the bruit of thee.' — Nahum. iii. 19. 

* Vid. Liv. xxxvii. 48. " Of. From. See page 247. 

* Glory. Vaunting; hoastfulness. • I -will punish the ^/ary of his high looks.' 
— Isaiah x. 

' On death-beds some in conscious glory lie, 
Since of the doctor in the mode they die.' — Young. 
» Upon. At. See page 343. 

24 



494 Of Vain Glory. [Essay Uv. 

charge and adventure/ a composition of glorious natures doth 
put life into business ; and those that are of solid and sober 
natures, have more of the ballast than of the sail. In fame of 
learning, the flight will be slow without some feathers of osten- 
tation : ' Qui de contemnenda gloria libros scribunt, nomen 
suum inscribunt." Socrates, Aristotle, Galen, were men full 
of ostentation : certainly vain glory helpeth to perpetuate a 
man's memory ; and virtue was never so beholden' to human 
nature, as* it received its due at the second hand. Neither had 
the fame of Cicero, Seneca, Plinius, Secundus, borne her age so 
well if it had not been joined with some vanity in themselves, 
like unto varnish, that makes ceilings not only shine, but last. 
But ail this while, when I speak of vain glory, I mean not of 
that property that Tacitus doth attribute to Mucianus, ' Om- 
nium, quse dixerat feceratque, arte quadam ostentator :" for 
that proceeds not of vanity, but of natural magnanimity and 
discretion ; and in some persons it is not only comely, but 
gracious :^ for excusations,' cessions,® modesty itself, well gov- 
erned, are but arts of ostentation ; and amongst those arts 
there is none better than that which Plinius Secundus speaketh 
of, which is, to be liberal of praise and commendation to others, 
in that wherein a man's self hath any perfection ; for, saith 
Pliny, very wittingly, ' In commending another, you do your- 
self right ;" for he that you commend is either superior to you 
in that'" you commend, or inferior ; if he be inferior, if he be 
to be commended, you much more ; if he be superior, if he be 
not to be commended, you much less. 



* Charge and adventure. Cost and risk. ' That I may make the gospel of 
Christ without charge.' — 1 Cor. ix. 18. ' One castle yielded: but two stood on 
their adventure.' — Hayward. 

* ' Those who write books on despising glory inscribe their names therein.' — 
Cicero, Tusc. Disp. i. 15. 

' Beholden. Indebted. ' We are not much beholden to your love.' — Shafcespere. 

* As. TTiat. See 'page 23. 

* ' By a certain art he made a display of all he had said or done.' — Hist. xi. 80, 

* Gracious. Graceful. See page 406. 
' Excusation. Excuse ; apology. 

' He made liis excusation, 
And feigneth cause of pure drede.' — ShaJcespere. (Gower.) 

* Cessions. Concessions. 

* Plin. Epist. vl 17. 

» That. What. See page 64. 



Essay liv.] Of Vain Glory. 495 

Vain glorious men are the scorn of wise men, tlie admira- 
tion of fools, the idols of parasites, and the slaves of their own 
vaunts. 

ANTITHETA ON" VAIN GLORY. 

Pro. Contra. 

•Qui suas laudes appetit, aliorum * » * * « 

simul appetit utilitates. ' Turpe est proco solieitare ancillam ; 

' He who earnestly seeks glory for him- est autem virtu tis ancilla lans. 

self, is seeking, at the same time, the wel- ' It is disgraceful for a wooer to par; 

fare of others! court to the handmaid; now glory is the 

handmaid of virtue.' 



ESSAY LV. OF HONOUR AND REPUTATION. 

'T^HE winning of honour is bnt the reveah'ng of a man's virtue 
-^ and worth without disadvantage ; for some in tlieir actions 
do woo and aftect' honour and reputation — which sort of men 
are commonly much talked of, but inwardly little admired — 
and some contrariwise," darken their virtue in the show of it, 
so as they be undervalued in opinion. If a man perform that 
which hath not been attempted before, or attempted and given 
over, or hath been achieved, but not with so good circumstance,^ 
he sliall purchase more honour than by effecting a matter of 
greater difficulty, or virtue, wherein he is but a follower. If a 
man so temper his actions, as' in some one of them he doth 
content every faction or combination of people, the music will 
be the fuller. A man is an ill husband' of his honour that 
entereth into any action, the failing wherein may disgrace him 
more than the carrying of it through can honour him. Honour 
that is gained and broken upon another" hath the quickest re- 
flection, like diamonds cut with fascets ; and, therefore, let a 
man contend to excel any competitors of his honour, in out- 
shooting them if he can, in their own bow. Discreet followers 
and servants help much to reputation : ' Omnis fama a domes- 
ticis emanat." Envy, which is the canker of honour, is best 
extinguished* bv declaring a man's self in his ends, rather to 



' Affect To desire earnestly ; to aim at. See page 1. 

* Contrariwise. On the contrary. See page 82. 
^ Circumstance. Adjuncts. 

' The pomp and circumstance of glorious war.' — Shakespere. 

* As. That. See page 23. 
' Husband. An ecotiomist. 

' You have scarce time 
To steal from spiritual leisure a brief span, 
To keep your earthly audit ; sure, in that, 
I deem you an ill husband.' — Shakespere. 
' ' Gained and broken upon another.' The Latin essaj' has, ' Honor qui com- 
parativus est, et alium prsegravat.' ' Weighs down or depresses others.' 
' ' All fame emanates froip domestics.' — Q. Cic. de Petit. Consul, v. I'J. 

* Most editions have 'distinguished' instead of 'extinguished.' But the Latin 
essay has ' extinguitur.' 



1"^-] ^f Sonouv and Beputation. 49T 

seek merit than fame: and bj attributing a man's successes 
rather to divine Providence and felicity, than to his own 
virtue or policy. The true marshalling of the degrees of 
sovereign honour are these ; in the first place are ' conditores 
imperiorum,' founders of States and commonwealths ; such as 
were Eomulus, Cyrus, Caasar, Ottoman, Ismael : in the second 
place are ' legislatores,' lawgivers ; which are also called second 
founders, or ' perjjetui principes," because they govern by their 
ordinances after they are gone : such were Lycurgus, Solon, 
Justinian, Edgar, Alphonsus of Castile, the wise, that made the 
'Siete partidas:'" in third place are ' liberatores,' or 'salva- 
tores ;" such as compound' the long miseries of civil wars, or 
deliver their countries from servitude of strangers or tyrants ; as 
Augustus Csesar, Vespasianus, Aurelianus, Theodoricus, King 
Henry the Seventh of England, King Henry the Fourth of 
France : in the fourth place are ' propagatores,' or ' propugna- 
tores imperii,'* such as in honourable wars enlarge their terri- 
tories, or make noble defence against invaders ; and in the last 
place are 'patres patrige,'* which reign justly, and make the 
times good wherein they live ; both which last kinds need no 
examples, they are in such number. Degrees of honour in 
subjects, are, first, 'participes curarum," those upon whom 
princes do discharge the greatest weight of their affairs ; their 
right hands, as we may call them : the next are ' duces belli,'* 
great leaders ; such as are princes' lieutenants, and do them 
notable" services in the wars : the third are ' gratiosi,' favourites : 
such as exceed not this scantling," to be solace to the sovereign, 
and harmless to the people : and the fourth, ' negotiis pares :'" 



' ' Perpetual rulers.' 

* The Siete Partidas. An ancient Spanish code of laws, divided into seven parts; 
hemie its name. 

' ' Liberators or preservers.' 

* Compound. To put an end to by adjustment of differences. 

' I would to God all strifes were well compounded.' — Shakespere. 

' Who should compound the controversies f — M'Tiitgift. 
* ' Extenders or defenders of the empire.' * ' Fathers of their country.' 

' ' Participators in cares.' * ' Leaders in wars.' 

* Notable. Remarkable. See page 484. 

" Scantling. A small proportion. ' In this narrow scantling of capacity we 
enjoy but one pleasure at once.' — Locke. 'A scantling of wit lay gasping for life 
and groaning beneath a heap of rubbish.' — Dryden. 

" ' Equal to the management of aflfairs.' 

42* II 



498 Of Honour and Rejpiitation. [Essay Iv, 

such as have groat places under princes, and execute their 
places with sufficiency/ There is an honour, likewise, which 
may be ranked amongst the greatest, which happeueth rarely ; 
that is, of such as sacrifice themselves' to death or danger for 
the good of their country ; as w^as M. Regulus, and the two 
Decii. 



ANNOTATIONS. 

Bacon does not advert to the circumstance, that one man 
often gets the credit which is due to another ; one being the 
ostensible and another principally the real author of something 
remarkable ; according to the proverb that ' little dogs find the 
hare, but the big ones catch it.' And sometimes, again, the 
thing itself that is the most difficult and the most important 
will be overlooked, while much admiration is bestowed on 
something else which was an easy, natural, and almost inevit- 
able result of it. 

There cannot be a more striking examj^le of this than the 
vast importance attached to the invention of printing, and the 
controversies as to who was the inventor ; when, in fact, it was 
the invention of a cheap paper that was the really important 
step, and which could not but be speedily followed by the use 
of printing. I say the tise^ because, when introduced, it could 
hardly be called a new invention. The loaves of bread found 
at Pompeii and Herculaneum were stamped with the baker's 
name. And, in fact, the seals used by the ancients were a 
stamp of the name, which was wetted with ink, and impressed 
on the parchment ; so that signing and sealing were one and 
the same. Now all this is, substantially, of the character of 
printing. Whether we used fixed types, like the Chinese, or 
moveable, is a mere matter of detail. 

But the only cause why this was not applied by the ancients 
to books, handbills, &c., was the costliness of j)apyrus and 



Sufficiency.. Ability. See page 252. 
' Sacrifice themselves. Devote themselves. 



Essay Iv.] Annotations. 499 

parchment. Tliis limited the sale to so small a numher of 
capicG, that printing would have cost more than transcribing. 
As soon as a cheap materkil for books was invented, it was 
likely to occur, and probably did occur, to many, that a lower 
price, and a wider sale, would be secured by some kind of 
stamp. 

Then, as to the real performers of some great feat, or ori- 
ginators of some measure or institution, history w^ould furnish 
many instances of mistakes that have prevailed. A poem has 
come down to us celebrating Harmodius and Aristogeiton as 
having slain the tyrant of Athens, and restored liberty to their 
country. And Thucydides, who lived among the grandchildren 
of those who remembered the transaction, complains that such 
was the prevalent belief in his own day ; though Ilipparchus, 
whom those men assassinated, was not the tyrant, but was 
brother of Ilippias, the actual sovereign, and who continued to 
reign some years longer. 

Li our own day, three of the most important measures were 
brought about, ostensibly, by ministers who, so far from being 
the real authors of them, were, in their own judgment and 
inclination, decidedly opposed to them — the repeal of the 
Koman Catholic disabilities, the abolition of slavery, and 
the introduction of free trade in corn. The ministries of 
^he Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel are well known 
to have been hostile to what was called Eoman Catholic 
emancipation, and advocates of the corn laws, and to have 
been driven by necessity to take the steps they did. Yet it 
is possible that they may go down to posterity as the authors 
of those tw^o great changes. It is not so generally known that 
Lord Melbourne, then one of the ministers, on going out of 
the^Iouse of Lords on the night that the Bill passed for 
abolishing slavery, remarked to an acquaintance that if he could 
have had his own way in that matter, he would have left it 
quite alone. 

It is remarkable that Bacon has said nothing about men's 
solicitude concerning j9(9-s^At^7/?(9?is reputation, — that delusion of 
the imagination (for it surely is such) of which there is jjerhaps 
no one quite destitute, — and which is often found peculiarly 
strong in those who disbelieve a Future State, and deride the 
believers. Yet granting that these latter are mistaken, and are 



500 Of Honour and Beputation. [Essay Iv. 

only grasping at a shadow, still they are hoping for what they 
at least believe to be real. They expect — whether erroneously 
or not — to have an actual consciousness of the enjoyment they 
look 'forward to. The others are aware that, when they shall 
have attained the prize of posthumous glory, they shall have no 
perception of it. They hnow that it is a shade they are grasp- 
ing at. Yet Hume had this solicitude about his posthumous 
fame. ' Knowing,' says the Edinhurgh Review^ ' from Pope 
what is meant by a ruling passion, it is a poor thing to set it 
on the die of literary fame. In one way, he made the most of 
it; for his prescience of his growing reputation certainly soothed 
him in his last illness. This was something ; but it is surely 
singular. Delusion for delusion, the manes fahulaque of another 
world are at least an improvement on the after life of post- 
humous renown. Immortality on earth fades away before the 
light of immortality in a future state. On the other hand, 
what is to be said but vanity of vanities ! when a philosopher 
who has no expectation of a future state, and who is contem- 
plating annihilation with complacency, is found, notwithstand- 
ing this, busied on his death-bed about his posthumous fame ? 
— careful what men may be saying of his essays and his 
histories, after he himself is sleeping in the grave, where aU 
things are forgotten !' 

' . . . Which s&rt of men are commonly much talked of? 

' A sort of man' that is not only much talked of, but com- 
monly admired, is a man who, along with a considerable degree 
of cleverness and plausible fluency, is what is called puzzle- 
headed : — destitute of sound, clear, cautious judgment. This 
puzzle-headedness conduces much to a very sudden and rgpid 
rise to a (short-lived) celebrity. 

Such was the description once given of an author, who was 
at that time more talked about than almost any individual in 
the empire, and whom many admired as a surpassing genius, 
who had fully confuted the doctrines of Malthus, and made pro- 
digious discoveries in political science. One of the company 
took up the speaker very sharply ; observing that it was strange 



See an article on David Hume, Edinhurgh Review, No, clxxi, January, 1847. 



Essay Iv.] Annotations. 501 

to speak disparagingly of a man who, without wealth, birth, or 
high connections, had so very rapidly acquired great celebrity. 
Tlie other replied by making the observation just above given. 
For, men do not, said he, give up their prejudices, and adopt 
new views, very readily ; and consequently, one who refutes pre- 
vailing errors, and brings to light new or forgotten truths, will 
at first, and for a good while, find favour with but few. He will 
therefore have to wait (as was the case with Malthus) many 
years, and perhaps to his life's end, before he is appreciated. 
His credit will be lasting, but slow of growth. But the way to 
rise to sudden popularity, is to be a plausible advocate of pre- 
vailin^ doctrines^ and to defend, with some appearance of origi- 
nality, something which men like to believe, but have no good 
reason for believing. 

Now this will never be done so well by the most skilful dis- 
sembler, as by one who is himself the sincere dupe of his own 
fallacies, and brings them forward accordingly with an air of 
simple earnestness. And this implies his being — with whatever 
ingenuity and eloquence — puzzle-headed. 

There seemed to the company to be something in this ; but 
they were as loth to admit it, as (according to the remark 
just above) men usually are in such a matter. 'What do you 
say,' they replied, ' to Mr. Pitt ? He was an admired statesman 
at the age of twent^^-three ; and was he a puzzle-headed man V 

' Why, not ffenemlly such,' was the answer ; ' but he wa^ such 
in reference to the particular jioitit which mainly contributed to 
obtain Aim that very early and speedy popularity. Look at the 
portraits of him at that time, and you will see a paper in his 
hand, or on his table, inscribed ' Sinking Fund.' It was his 
eloquent advocacy of that delusion (as all, now, admit it to have 
been) which brought him such sudden renown. And he could 
not have so ably recommended — nor indeed would he probably 
have adopted — that juggle of Dr. Price's, if he had not been him- 
self the dupe of his fallacy ; as Lord Grenville also was ; who 
afterwards published a pamphlet in which he franklj'^ exposed 
the delusion.' 

This could not be denied to be a confirmation of the paradox. 
And then another case, — the converse of the above — was adduced 
on the same side : a case in which the whole British nation were, 
in one particular, manifestly puzzle-headed, except one man ; 



502 Of Honour and Rejputation. [Essay It. 

who was according'lj derided by all. In the dispute between 
Great Britain and her American colonies, though there were 
great difierences of opinion — some being for, and others against 
— taxing them ; some for force and some for conciliation — ^all 
agreed that the loss of them — the dismemberment of the Empire 
— ^would be a heavy calamity ; and how to hee^ them was the 
problem to be solved. Bnt Dean Tucker, standing quite alone, 
wrote a pamphlet to show that the separation would be no Ims 
at all, and that we had best give them the independence they 
coveted, at once, and in a friendly way. Some thought he was 
writing in jest, the rest despised him as too absurd to be worth 
answering. But now (and for above half a century) every one 
admits that he was quite right, and regrets that his view was 
not adopted. He might well have used the description of 
Thucydides applied to his own work ; urmia t<; aei fxaXlov, rj 
aytoviofia eg to napaxpTjiia anovEiv, ^vyKetTai} 

By the bye, it is remarkable that Professor Smyth, who gives 
him due praise for this view, remarks, at the same time, on his 
strange absurdity in saying, that it would be very easi/ (though 
not at all worth wliile) to subdue the American insurgents ; 
and that a hastily raised, disorderly militia could have no chance 
against a well disciplined and well commanded regular army. 

But from the documents brought forward in an admirable 
article in the Edinhirgh Revleio (January, 1846), on European 
and American State Confederacies, it appears that Dean Tucker 
was right there also — that the game was in our hands, and 
"Washington reduced to the brink of despair, and that nothing 
would have saved his cause, but such a series of blundering 
follies on the part of the British commanders, as never occurred 
before or since, and such as no one would have calculated on. 

Of all the clever men then that at that time existed, and 
many of whom spoke eloquently on each side. Tucker was the 
only one who was not puzzle-headed. And he obtained some 
small share of late credit, but present contempt. 

A very clear-headed man will always have detected some pop- 
ular fallacies, and perceived some truths generally overlooked ; 
and, in short, will always be somewhat in advance of the common 



' It is composed so as to be regarded as a possession for ever, rather than as a 
prize declamation, intended only for tlje present. ^ 



Essay Iv.] Annotations. 503 

run of liis contemporaries. And if he has the courage to speak 
out on these points, lie must wait till the next generation for the 
chief part at least of his popularity. The fame of clever but 
puzzle-headed advocates of vulgar errors, will spring up like a 
mushroom in a night, which rots in a day. His will be a tree, 
*■ seris factura nepotibus umbram.' 

The author in question furnished a striking confirmation of 
the paradox. In two or three years he and his book were 
totally forgotten. He himself outlived, by a good many years, 
his own mushroom celebrity. He went off, like a comet into 
its aphelion, and became invisible. It would be difficult to find 
a copy of his works, except at the trunk-maker's. And the 
prophecy concerning him, in the conversation above recorded, 
is probably forgotten also by those who took part in it. ' Ipsae 
periere ruinee.' 

The truth is, that what people in general most readily and 
most cordially approve, is the echo of their own sentiments ; 
and w^hatever efi'ect this may produce must be short-lived. We 
liear of volcanic islands thrown up in a few days to a formid- 
able size, and, in a few weeks or months, sinking down again 
or washed away ; while other islands, which are the summits 
of banks covered with weed and drift sand, continue slowly in- 
creasing year after year, century after century. The man that 
is in a hurry to see the full eflect of his own tillage, should cul- 
tivate annuals, and not forest trees. The clear-headed lover of 
truth is content to wait for the result of his. If he is wrong 
in the doctrines he maintains, or the measures he proposes, at 
least it is not for the sake of immediate popularity. If he is 
right, it will be found out in time, though, perhaps, not in his 
time. Tlie preparers of the mummies were (Herodotus says) 
driven out of the house by the family who had engaged their 
services, with execrations and stones ; but their work remains 
sound after three thousand years. 



ESSAY LVI. OF JUDICATURE. 

JUDGES ought to remember that their office hjus dicere, and 
not 'jus dare' — to interpret law, and not to make law, or 
give law — else will it be like the authority claimed by the 
church of Rome, which, under pretext of exposition of Scrip- 
ture, doth not stick' to add and alter, and to pronounce that 
which they do not find, and by show of antiquity to introduce 
novelty. Judges ought to be more learned than witty, more 
reverend than plausible, and more advised than confident. 
Above all things, integrity is their portion and proper virtue. 
'Cursed (saith the law) is he that removeth the landmark." 
Tlie mislayer of a mere stone is to blame ; but it is the unjust 
judge that is the capital remover of landmarks, when he de- 
fineth amiss of land and property. One foul sentence doth 
more hurt than many foul examples ; for these do but corrupt 
the stream, the other corrupteth the fountain — so saith Solo- 
mon, ' Fons turbatus, et vena corrupta est Justus cadens in 
causa sua coram adversario." 

The office of judges may have a reference unto the parties 
that sue, unto the advocates that plead, unto clerks and minis- 
ters of justice underneath them, and to the sovereign or State 
above tliem. 

First, for the cause of parties that sue. There be (saith 
the Scripture) 'that turn judgment into wonnwood;'* and 
surely there be also that turn it into vinegar; for injustice 
maketli it bitter, and delays make it sour. The principal 
duty of a judge is to suppress force and fraud, whereof force is 
the more pernicious when it is open, and fraud when it is close 
and disguised. Add thereto contentious suits, which ought to 
be spewed^ out as the surfeit of courts. A judge ought to 



* stick. To scruple ; to hesitate. ' Rather than impute our miscarriages to our 
own corruptions, we do not stick to arraign Providence itself.' — II Estrange. 

' Deut. xxvii. 17. 

^ ' A righteous man falling in his cause before his adversary is as a troubled 
fountain and a corrupt spring.' — Prov. xxv. 26. 

* Amos V. 7. 

Spew. To eject with loathing. ' Because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold 
nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth.' — Revel, iii. 16. 



Essay Ivi.] Of Jtidicature. 505. 

prepare liis way to a just sentence, as God nseth to prepare his 
way by raising valleys and taking down hills : so when there 
appeareth on either side a high hand, violent persecntion, cnn- 
ning advantages taken, combination, power, great counsel, then 
is the virtue of a judge seen to make inequality equal ; that he 
may plant his judgment as upon even ground. ' Qui fortiter 
emungit, elicit sanguinem ;" and where the wine-press is hard 
wrought,' it yields a harsh wine, that tastes of the grape stone. 
Judges must beware of hard constructions and strained infer- 
ences ; for there is no worse torture than the torture of laws ; 
especially in case of laws penal, they ought to have care, that 
that which was meant for terror," be not turned into rigour : 
and that they bring not upon people that shower whereof the 
Scripture speaketh, ' Pluet super eos laqueos ;'^ for penal laws 
pressed, are a shower of suares upon the people : therefore let 
jjenal laws, if they have been sleepers of long,^ or if they be 
grown unfit for the present time, be by wise judges confined in 
the execution : ' Judicis ofiicium est, ita tempora rerum,' &c.* 
In causes of life and death, judges ought (as far as the law per- 
mitteth) in justice to remember mercy, and to cast a severe eye 
upon the example, but a merciful eye upon the person. 

Secondly, for the advocates and counsel that plead. Patience 
and gravity of hearing is an essential part of justice, and an 
over-speaking judge is no well-tuned cymbal.'' It is no grac^^ 
to a judge first to find that which he might have heard in due 
time from the bar, or to show quickness of conceit* in cutting 
off evidence or counsel too short, or to prevent information by 
questions, though pertinent. The parts of a judge in hear- 
ing are four : — to direct the evidence ; to moderate length, 



^ ' Who wrings hard draws forth blood.' — 1 Cf. Prov. xxx. 33. 

° Wrought. Worked. ' It had been a breach of peace to have msntght any mine 
of his.' — Raleigh. 

' Terror. Wliat may excite dread. ' Rulers are not a terror to good works, but 
to evil.' — Romans xiii. 3. 

* ' He shall rain snares upon them.' — Psalm xi, 6. 

' Of. F<yr ; during. ' He was desirous to see him of a long season.' — Luke 
xxiii. 8. 

' ' It is the duty of a judge to take into consideration the times, as well as the 
circumstances, of facts.' — Ovid, Trist. 1. i. 37. ' Psalm cl. 5. 

* Conceit. Conception ; apprehension. ' I shall be found of a quick conceit in 
judgment, and I shall be admired.' — Wisdom viii. 11. 

43 



506 Of Judicature. [Essay Ivi. 

repetition, or impertinency' of speech ; to recapitulate, select, 
aud collate the material points of that which hath been said ; 
and to give the rule or sentence. Whatsoever is above these is 
too much, and proceedeth either of glory' and willingness to 
speak, or of impatience to hear, or of shortness of memory, or 
of want of a stayed and equal attention. It is a strange thing 
to see that the boldness of advocates should prevail with judges, 
wdiereas they should imitate God, in whose seat they sit, who 
represseth the presumptuous, and giveth grace to the modest ; 
but it is more strange that judges should have noted favourites, 
which cannot but cause multiplication of fees and suspicion of 
by-ways. There is due from the judge to the advocate some 
commendation and gracing,' where causes are well handled and 
fair'* pleaded, especially towards the side which obtaineth° not, 
for that upholds in the client the reputation of his counsel, and 
beats down in him the conceit' of his cause. There is likewise 
due to the public a civil reprehension of advocates, where there 
appeareth cunning counsel, gross neglect, slight information, 
indiscreet pressing, or an over-bold defence. And let not the 
counsel at the bar chop' with the jndge, nor wind himself into 
the handling of the cause anew, after the judge hath declared 
his sentence ; but, on the other side, let not the judge meet the 
cause half-way, nor give occasion to the party to say his counsel 
or proofs were not heard. 

Tliirdly, for that that concerns clerks and ministers, Tlie 
place of justice is a hallowed place ; and therefore not only the 



* Impertinency. Irrelevancy. See page 75. 
' Of. From. See page 247. 

* Glory. Display ; vaunting. See page 493. 

* Grace. To favour. 

' Regardless pass'd her o'er, nor gracd with kind adieu.' — Drydcn. 

* Fair. Fairly. 

' Entreat her fairJ — Shakenpere. 

* Obtain. To prevail ; succeed. ' Thou shalt not obtain uQi" escape by fleeing.' 
— Feelesiasticus xi. 10. 

* Conceit. Opinion. ' feeest thou a man wise in his own conceit ? TTiere is 
more hope of a fool than of him.' — Prov. xxvi. 12. 

' I shall not fail to approve the fair conceit 
The king hath of you.' — Shakespere. 

* Chop. To bandy words. 

' The chopping French we do not understand.' — Shakespere. 



Ivi.] Of Judicature. 507 

bench, but the footpace' and precincts, and purprise* thereof, 
ought to be preserved without scandal and corruption ; for, 
certainly, grapes (as the Scripture saith) ' will not be gathered 
of thorns or thistles ," neither can justice yield her fruit with 
sweetness among the briars and brambles of catching and 
polling* clerks and ministers. The attendance of courts is 
subject to four bad instrunyents : first, certain persons that are 
sowers of suits, which make the court swell, and the country 
pine : the second sort is of those that engage courts in quarrels 
of jurisdiction, and are not truly 'amici curiae,' but ' parasiti 
curise,'^ in puffing a court up beyond her bounds for their own 
scraps and advantages : the third sort is of those that may be 
accounted the left hands of courts : persons that are full of 
nimble and sinister tricks and shifts, whereby they pervert the 
plain and direct courses of courts, and bring justice into oblique 
lines and labyrinths : and the fourth is the poller' and exacter 
of fees, which justifies the common resemblance of the courts 
of justice to the bush, whereunto while the sheep flies for de- 
fence in weather, he is sure to lose part of the fleece. On the 
other side, an ancient' clerk, skilful in precedents, wary in pro- 
ceedings, and understanding in the business of the court, is an 
excellent figure of a court, and doth many times point the way 
to the judge himself. 

Fourthly, for that which may concern the sovereign and 
estate. Judges ought, above all, to remember the conclusion 
of the Eoman twelve tables, ' Salus populi suprema lex ;'* and 
to know that laws, except they be in order to that end, are but 
things captious, and oracles not well inspired : therefore it is a 
happy thing in a State, when kings and states do often consult 



' Footpace. A lobby. 

* Purpiise. ' Enclosure. ' But their wives and children were to assemble 
together in a certain place in Phocis, and they filled the purprises and precincts 
thereof with a huge quantity of food.' — Holland. 

" Matt. vii. 16. 

* Polling. Plundering. ' Peeling and polling were voyded, and in place thereof 
succeeded liberality.' — Erasmus. 

^ ' Friends of the court' but ' parasites of the court.' 

' Poller. Plunderer. ' With Sallust, he may rail downright at a spoiler of 
countries, and yet in office to be a most grievous poller himself — Burton. 

' Ancient. Senior, 'Junius and Andronicus were in Christianity his ancients.' 
— Hooker. ' ' The safety of the people is the supreme law.' 



508 Of Judicature. [Essay Ivi. 

with judges : and again, when judges do often consult with the 
king and State : the one, where there is matter of law inter- 
venient' in business of State ; the other when there is some 
consideration of State intervenient in matter of law ; for 
many times the things deduced to judgment may be ' meum' 
and ' tuum," when the reason and consequence thereof may 
trench to point of estate : I call , matter of estate, not only 
the parts of sovereignty, but whatsoever introduceth any great 
alteration or dangerous precedent : or concerneth manifestly 
any great portion of people ; and let no man weakly conceive 
that just laws, and true policy, have any antipathy ; for they 
are like the spirits and sinews, that one moves with the other. 
Let judges also remember, that Solomon's throne was supported 
by lions on both sides :' let them be lions, but yet lions under 
the throne ; being circumspect, that they do not check or oppose 
any points of sovereignty. Let not judges also be so ignorant 
of their own right as to think there is not left them, as a prin- 
cipal part of their office, a wise use and application of laws ; 
for they may remember what the apostle saitli of a greater law 
than theirs, ' Nos scimus quia lex bona est, modo quis ea utatur 
legitime.'* 

ANTITHETA. 
Pro. Contra. 

' Non est interpretatio, sed divinatio, ' Ex omnibus verbis eliciendus est 

qua; recedit a litera. sensus, qui interpretur singula. 

'If we depart from the letter, we ' The sense of the whole should be 

are not interpreting the law, but guessing taken as the interpreter of each single 
at the law.' word.' 

' Cum reeeditur a litera, judex transit ' Pessima tyrannis lex in equuko. 

in legislatoreni. ' Law put to the rack is the worst of 

' When we depart from the letter, tyrannies' 
thi judge is changed into a legislator.' 



' Intervenient. Intervening. 'I omit things intervenient.' — Wotton. 

* ' Mine' and ' thine.' 

* 1 Kitigs X. 20. 

* ' We know that the law is good, if a man use it lawfully.' — 1 Tim. 



Essay Ivi.] Amiotations. 509 



ANNOTATIONS. 

' There is due to the puUic a civil reprehension of advocates, 

where tlwre appear eth cunning counsel, indiscreet 

pressing, or an over-hold defence^ 

The temptation to an ' over-bold defence' — to a wiltiil mis- 
leading of a judge or jury by s.pecious sophistry, or seeking to 
embarrass an honest witness, and bring his testimony into dis- 
credit — is one to which the advocate is, undeniably, greatly ex- 
posed. Nay, it has even been maintained by no mean authority,* 
' that it is part of a pleader's duty to have no scruples about 
any act whatever that may beneiit his client.' 'There are 
many whom it may be needful to remind,' says an eminent 
lawyer, ' that an advocate, by the sacred duty of his connection 
with his client, knows, in the discharge of that office, but one 
person in the world — that client, and none other. To serve 
that client, by all expedient means, to protect that client at all 
hazards and costs to all others (even the party already injured) 
and amongst others, to himself, is the highest and most nnques- 
tioned of his duties. And he must not regard the alarm, the 
suflering, the torment, the destruction, which he may bring 
upon any others. Nay, separating even the duties of a patriot 
from those of an advocate, he must go on, reckless of the con- 
sequences, if his fate should unhappily be to involve his coun- 
try in confusion for his client.' — {Licence of Counsel, p. 3.] 

On the other hand, it is recorded that ' Sir Matthew Hale, 
whenever he was convinced of the injustice of any cause, would 
engage no more in it than to explain to his client the grounds 
of that conviction ; he abhorred the practice of misreciting 
evidence, quoting precedents in books falsely or unfairly, so as 
to deceive ignorant juries or inattentive judges ; and he adhered 
to the same scrupulous sincerity in his pleadings which he 
observed in the other transactions of life. It was as great a 
dishonour as a man was capable of, that for a little money he 
was hired to say otherwise than he thought.' — {Licence of Coun- 
sel, p. 4.] 

* ' Lecture on the Intellectual and Moral Influences of the Professions,' re- 
printed in the Elements of Rhetoric. 

43* 



510 Of Judicature. [Essay Ivl. 

' IT^o advocate, says another eminent legal writer, ' observ- 
ing in an honest witness a deponent whose testimony promises 
to be adverse, assumes terrific tones and dej^ortment, and, pre- 
tending to find dishonesty on the part of the witness, strives 
to give his testimony the appearance of it. I say a hond fide 
witness ; for in the case of a witness who, by an aflverse inter- 
rogator, is really looked npon as dishonest, this is not the prop- 
er course, nor is it taken with him. For bringing to light the 
falsehood" of a witness really believed to be mendacious, the 
more suitable, or rather the only suitable course is to forbear 
to express the impression he has inspired. Supposing his tale 
clear of suspicion, the witness runs on his course with fluency 
till he is entangled in some irretrievable contradiction, at vari- 
ance with other parts of his own story, or with facts notorious 
in themselves, or established by proofs from other sources.' — 
[Licence of Counsel, p. 6.] 

' We happen to be aware, from the practice of persons of the 
highest experience in the examination of witnesses, that this 
description is almost without exception correct, and that, as a 
general rule, it is only the honest and timid witness who is 
confounded by imperious deportment. The practice gives pre- 
eminence to the unscrupulous witness who can withstand such 
assaults. Roger North, in his life of Sir Dudley Korth, re- 
lates that the law of Turkey, like our absurd law of evidence 
in some cases, required the testimony of two witnesses in proof 
of each fact; and that a practice had in consequence arisen, and 
had obtained the sanction of general opinion, of using a false 
witness in proof of those facts which admitted of only one 
witness. Sir Dudley North, while in Turkey, liad numerous 
disputes which it became necessary to settle by litigation, — ■ 
'and,' says his biographer, ' our merchant found by experience, 
that in a direct fact a false witness was a surer card than a true 
one ; for if the judge has a mind to baffle a testimony, an honest, 
harmless witness, that doth not know his play, cannot so well 
stand his many captious questions as a false witness used to the 
trade Avill do ; for he hath been exercised, and is prepared for 
such handling, and can clear himself, when the other will be 
confounded : therefore circumstances may be such as to make 
the false one more eligible.' 

According to one, then, of the writers I have cited, an 



Essay Ivi.] Annotations. 511 

advocate is justified, and is fulfilling a duty, not only in pro- 
testing with solemnity his own full conviction of the justice of 
his client's cause, though he may feel no such conviction, — ^not 
only in feigning various emotions (like an actor ; except that 
the actor's credit consists in its being hiown that he is only 
feigning), such as pity, indignation, moral approbation, or 
disgust, or contempt, when he neither feels anything of the 
kind, nor believes the case to be one that justly calls for such 
feelings ; but he is also occasionally to entrap or mislead, to 
revile, insult, and calumniate persons whom he may in his heart 
believe to be respectable persons and honest witnesses. Another 
on the contrary observes : ' We might ask our learned friend 
and fellow-christian, as well as the able and noble editor of 
Paley's Natural Theology., and his other fellow-professors of the 
religion which says ' that lying lips are an abomination to the 
Lord,' to explain to us how they reconcile the practice under 
their rule, with the christian precepts, or avoid the solemn 
scriptural denunciation — ' Woe unto them that call evil good, 
and good evil ; that put darkness for light, and light for dark- 
ness ; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter ; . . which 
justify the wicked for reward, and take away the righteousness 
of the righteous from him.' — {Licence of Counsel., p. 10.] 

Of the necessity and allowableness of the practices upon 
which these opposite legal opinions have been given, I leave 
every one to judge for himself. For my own part, I think that 
the kind of skill by which a cross-examiner succeeds in alarm- 
ing, misleading, or bewildering an honest witness, may be cha- 
racterized as the most, or one of the most, base and depraved 
of all possible employments of intellectual power, Nor is it 
by any means the most effectual way of eliciting truth. Tlie 
miode best adapted for attaining this object is, I am convinced, 
quite different from that by which an honest, simple-minded 
witness is most easily baffled and confused. I have seen the 
experiment tried, of subjecting a witness to such a kind of cross- 
examination by a practical lawyer as would have been, I am 
convinced, the most likely to alarm and perplex many an honest 
witness, without any effect in shaking the testimony ; and after- 
wards by a totally opposite mode of examination, such as would 
not have at all perplexed one who was honestly telling the 
truth, that same witness was drawn on, step by step, to acknow- 



512 Of Judicature. [Essay Ivi. 

ledge the utter falsity of the whole. Generally speaking, a quiet, 
gentle, and straightforward, though full and careful, examination, 
will be the most adapted to elicit truth ; and the manoeuvres, 
and the browbeating, wliich are the most adapted to confuse 
an honest, simple-minded witness, are just what the dishonest 
one is the best prepared for. The more the storm blusters, the 
more carefully he wraps round him the cloak, which a warm 
sunshine will often induce him to throw off. 

I will add one remark upon the danger incurred by the 
advocate — even if he be one who would scruple either wilfully 
to use sophistry to mislead a judge, or to perplex and browbeat 
an honest witness — of having his mind alienated from the 
investigation of truth. Bishop Butler observes, and laments, 
that it is very common for men to have ' a curiosity to know 
what is said^ but no curiosity to know what is true^ Now, 
none can be (other points being equal) more in need of being 
put on his guard against this fault than he who is professionally 
occupied with a multitude of cases, in each of which he is to 
consider what may be plausibly urged on both sides ; while the 
question what ought to be the decision is out of his province as 
a pleader. I am supposing him not to be seeking to mislead 
by urging fallacious arguments ; but there will often be sound 
and valid arguments — real probabilities — on opposite sides. A 
judge, or any one whose business it is to ascertain truth, is to 
decide according to the preponderance of the reasons ; but the 
pleader's business is merely to set forth as forcibly as possible 
those on his own side. And if he thinks that the habitual 
practice of this has no tendency to generate in him, morally, 
any indifference, or, intellectually, any incomj)etency, in respect 
of the ascertainment of truth, — if he consider himself quite safe 
from any such danger, — I should then say that he is in very 
great danger. 



ESSAY LVII. OF ANGEE. 

'T^O seek to extinguish anger utterly is but a b rave ry.' of the 
■^ Stoics. We have better oracles : ' Be angry, but sin not ; 
let not the sun go down upon your anger."" Anger must be 
limited and confined, both in race and in time. We will first 
speak how the natural inclination and habit ' to be angry,' may 
be attempered^ and calmed : secondly, how the particular 
motions of anger may be repressed, or, at least, refrained^ from 
doing mischief ; thirdly, how to raise anger, or appease anger iu 
another. 

For the first there is no other way but to meditate and 
ruminate well upon the effects of anger, how it troubles man's 
life ; and the best time to do this, is to look back upon anger 
when the fit is thoroughly over, Seneca saith well, ' that 
anger is like rain, which breaks itself upon that it falls." The 
Scripture exhorteth us, 'to possess our souls in patience ;'° who- 
soever is out of patience, is out of possession of his soul. Men 
must not turn bees : 

* Animasque in viilnere ponunt.'^ 

Anger is certainly a kind of baseness, as it appears well in the 
weakness of those subjects in whom it reigns, children, women, 
old folks, sick folks. Only men must beware that they carry 
their anger rather with scorn than with fear, so that they may 
seem rather to be above the injury than below it, which is a 
thing easily done, if a man will give law to himself in it. 



* Bravery. Bravado. ' One Tait, who was then of the Lord's party, came 
forth in a bravery, asking if any had courage to break a lance for his mistress.' — 
Spottiswode. 

* Sphes. iv. 26. 

' Attemper. To temper ; soften. 

' Those smiling eyes, attempring every ray.' — Pope. 

* Refrain. To restrain. 

' I refrain mj lips. 
I refrain my soul, and keep it low.' 

* Sen. Be Ira, i. 1. ' Luke xxi. 19. 
' 'And leave their lives in the wouiid.' — Virg. Georg. iv. 238. 



514 Of Anger. [Essay Ivii, 

For the second point, the causes and motives of anger are 
chiefly three : first, to be too sensible of hurt, for no man is 
angry that feels not himself hurt, and, therefore, tender and 
delicate persons must needs be oft' angry, they have so many 
things to trouble them which more robust natures have little 
sense of; the next is, the apprehension and construction of the 
injury offered to be, in the circumstances thereof, full of con- 
tempt — for- contempt is that which putteth an edge upon anger, 
as much, or more, than the hurt itself; and, therefore, when 
men are ingenious in picking out circumstances of contempt, 
they do kindle their anger much ; lastly, opinion of the touch* 
of a man's reputation doth multiply and sharpen anger, wherein 
the remedy is, that a man should have, as Gonsalvo was wont 
to say, ' telam honoris crassioi'em.'* But in all retrainings of 
anger, it is the best remedy to win time, and to make a man's 
self believe that the opportunity of his revenge is not yet come ; 
but that he foresees a time for it, and so to still himself in the 
mean time, and reserve it. 

To contain* anger from mischief, though it take hold of a 
man, there be two things whereof you must have special 
caution ; the one, of extreme bitterness of words, especially if 
they be aculeate^ and proper ;° for ' communia maledicta" are 
nothing so much ; and again, that in anger a man reveal no 
secrets ; for that makes him not fit for society ; the other, that 
you do not peremptorily break off in any business in a fit of 
anger: but howsoever' you show bitterness, do not act anything 
that is not revocable. 

For raising and appeasing anger in another, it is done chiefly 



■ Oft. Often. See page 332. 

* Touch. Censure. ' I never bare any touch of conscience with greater regret.' 
— King Charles. 

° ' A thicker web of honoui-.' — A. L. II. xx. 12. 

* Contain. To restrain. 

' Fear not, my lord, we can contain ourselves.' — Shakcspcre. 
'Aculeate. Pointed; sharp; stinf/inr/. 

* Proper. Appropriate. 

' In Athens all was pleasure, mirth, and play, 
All proper to the Spring, and sprigthly May.' — Dri/dcn. 
' ' General reproaches.' 

' Howsoever. However. ' Bersosus, who, after Moses, was one of the most 
ancient, howsoever he has since been corrupted, doth in the substance of all agree.' 
— Raleigh. 



Essay Ivii.] Annotations. 615 

by clmsing of times wLcn men are forwardest and worst dis- 
posed to incense tliem ; again, by gathering- (as was tonched 
before) all that you can find out to aggravate the contempt ; 
and the two remedies are by the contraries : tlie former to take 
good times, when first to relate to a man an angry' business, 
for the first impression is much ; and the other is, to sever, as 
much as may be, the construction of the injury from the point 
of contempt ; imputing it to misunderstanding, fear, passion, or 
what you wilL 



ANNOTATIONS. 

Aristotle, in his Ehetoric (Book ii. chap. 2) — a work with 
which Bacon seems to have been little, if at all, acquainted — 
defines anger to be 'a desire, accompanied by mental uneasi- 
ness, of avenging oneself, or, as it were, inflicting punish- 
ment for something that appeal's an unbecoming slight, either 
in things which concern one's self, or some of one's friends.' 
And he hence infere that, if this be anger, it must be in- 
variably felt towards some individual, not against a class or 
description of persons. And he afterwards grounds upon this 
definition the distinction between anger and hatred / between 
which, he says, there are several points of comparison. Anger 
arises out of something having a personal reference to ourselves ; 
wdiereas hatred is indei)endent of such considerations, since it is 
borne towards a person, merely on account of the believing him 
to be of a certain description or character. In the next place, 
anger is accompanied by pain ; hatred is not so. Again, angei* 
would be satisfied to intiict some pain on its object, but hatred 
desires nothing short of deadly harm ; the angry man desires 
that the pain he inflicts should be hioimi to come from Jiim , 
but hatred cares not for this. Again, the feeling of anger is 
softened by time, but hatred is incurable. Once more, the 
angry man might be induced to pity the object of his anger, if 
many misfortunes befell him ; but he who feels hatred cannot 



Angry. Provoking anger. 

' That was to him an an^ry jape (trick.)' — Shakespere. 



516 Of Anger. [Essay Ivii. 

"be thus moved to pity, for he desires the destrnction of the 
object of his hatred.' 

Adam Smith, in liis Themy of Moral Sentiments^ seems to 
consider as the chief point of distinction between anger and 
hatred, the necessity to the gratification of the former that the 
object of it shonkl not only be punished, but punished by means 
of the oifended person, and on account of the particular injury 
inflicted. Anger requires ' that the offender should not only 
be made to grieve in his turn, but to grieve for that particular 
wrong which has been done by him. Tlie natural gratificatio* 
of this passion tends, of its own accord, to produce all the 
political ends of punishment ; the correction of the criminal, 
and example to the public.'^ 

It is to be observed, that in seeking to pacify one who is 
angry, opposite courses must be pursued with persons of two 
opposite dispositions. 

One man is at once calmed by submission, and readily ac- 
cepts an apology. Another is more and more irritated the more 
you acknowledge a fault, and is led, by the earnestness of your 
entreaty for pardon, to think himself more grievously wronged 
than he had at first supposed. The former has something 

never bite a man, or 
And he will sometimes come to 
convince himself that he had no reason to be so angry, unless 
you deny that he had. Tlie other can only be pacified by 
stoutly defending yourself, and maintaining that he was wrong 
to be displeased. 

A man of a violent and revengeful temper will sometimes 
exercise great self-control from motives of prudence, when he 
sees that he could not vent his resentment without danger or 
loss to himself. Such self-restraint as this does not at all tend 
to subdue or soften his fierce and malignant passions, and to 
make him a mild and placable character. It only keeps the fire 
smouldering within, instead of bursting out into a flame. He 
is not quelling the desire of revenge, but only repressing it till 
he shall have an opportunity of indulging it more safely and 



' Aristotle's Rhetoric. Book II., chap. iv. 

* Adam Smith. Tlieory of Moral Sentiments. Part 11, chap. i. p. 113. Eleventh 
Edition, 



Essay Ivii.] Annotations. 517 

effectuallj. And, accordinglj, he will have to exercise tlie same 
painful selt-restraint again and again on every fresh occasion. 
But to exert an equal self-restraint, on a good principle, 
with a sincere and earnest desire to subdue revengeful feelings, 
and to form a mild, and generous, and forgiving temper, — this 
will produce quite a different result. A man who acts thus on 
a right motive, will find his task easier and easier on each oc- 
casion ; because he will become less sensitive to provocations, 
and will have been forming a liabit of not merely avoiding any 
outward expression of anger in. words or acts, but also of 
indulging no resentful feelings within. 

It is to be observed, that generous forgiveness of injuries is 
a point of christian duty respecting which some people fall 
into confusion of thought. They confound together personal 
resentment and disaj)probatio7i of what is morally wrong. A 
person who has cheated you, or slandered, or otherwise w^ronged 
you.) is neither nwre nor le.ss a cheat or a slanderer, than if he 
had done the same to a stranger. And in that light he ought 
to be viewed. Such a person is one on whom you should not 
indeed wish to inflict any suffering beyond what may be neces- 
sary to reform him, and to deter other wrong-doers ; and you 
should seek to benefit him in the highest degree by bringing 
him to a sense of his sin. But j'ou ought not to chuse such a 
man as an associate, or to trust him, and in all respects treat 
him as if he had done nothing wrong. You should therefore 
take care, on the one hand, that the personal injury you may 
have suffered does not lead you to think worse of a man than 
he deserves, or to treat him worse ; and, on the other hand, 
you should not allow a false generosity to destroy in your mind 
the distinctions of right and wrong. Nor, again, should the 
desire of gaining credit for great magnanimity, lead you to 
pretend to think favourably of wrong conduct, merely because 
it is you tliat have suffered from it. None but thoughtless or 
misjudging people will applaud you for this. The duty of 
christian forgiveness does not require you, nor are you allowed, 
to look on injustice, or any other fault, with indifference, as if 
it were nothing wrong at all, merely because it is you that have 
been wronged. 

But even where we cannot but censure, in a moral point of 
44 



&18 Of Anger, [Essay Ivii.. 

view, the conduct of those who have injured u&, we should 
remember that such treatment as may be very fitting for them 
to receive, may be very unfitting for ns to give. To cherish^ 
or to gratify, haughty resentment, is a departure from the 
pattern left us by Him who ' endured such contradiction of 
sinners against Himself,' not to be justified by any ofi'ence that 
can be committed against us. And it is this recollection of 
Him who, faultless Himself, designed to leave us an example of 
meekness and long-sufiering, that is the true principle and 
motive of christian forgiveness. We shall best fortify our 
patience under injuries, by remembering how much we our- 
selves have to be forgiven, and that it was ' while we were yet 
sinners, Christ died for us.' Let the christian therefore accus- 
tom himself to say of any one who has greatly wronged him, 
'that man owes me an hundred pence. ""■ 

An old Spanish writer says, 'To return evil for good is 
devilish ; to return good for good is human ; but to return good 
for evil is godlike.' 



' Matt, xviii. 



ESSAY LVIII. OF VICISSITUDES OF THINGS. 

SOLOMON saitli, 'There is no new thing upon the earth:" 
so that as Plato had an imagination that all knowledge was 
but remembrance/ so Solomon givetli his sentence, 'That 
all novelty is but oblivion ;' whereby you may see, that the 
river of Lethe runneth as well above ground as below. There 
is an abstruse astrologer that saith, ' If it were not for two 
things that are constant (the one is, that the fixed stars ever 
stand at like distance one from another, and never come nearer 
together, nor go farther asunder; the other that the diurnal 
motion perpetually keepeth time), no individual would last one 
moment.' Certain it is, that matter is in a perpetual flux,' and 
never at a stay. The great winding-sheets that bury all things 
in oblivion are two, deluges and earthquakes. As for conflagra- 
tions and great droughts, they do not merely dispeople* but 
destroy. Phaeton's car went but a day ; and the three years' 
drought, in the time of Elias," was but particular, and left people 
alive. As for the great burnings by lightnings, which are often 
in the West Lidies," they are but narrow ; but in the other two 
destructions, by deluge and earthquake, it is farther to be noted, 
that the remnant of people which hap' to be reserved, are com- 
monly ignorant and mountainous people, that can give no ac- 
count of the time past ; so that the oblivion is all one, as if 
none had been left. K you consider well of the people of the 



* Eccles. i. 9. 

^ See Advancement of Learning. Dedication. 

^ Flux. Fluctuation. ' Our language, like our bodies, is in a perpetual _^Ma;.' — 
Felton. 

* Dispeople. Depopulate. 

' Kings, furious and severe, 
Who claim'd the skies, dispeopled air and floods. 
The lonely lords of empty wilds and woods.' — Pope. 

* 1 Kings xvii. 

* West Indies. ' In Bacon's time was meant by West Indies all the countries 
included under the name of the Spanish MaiiK that is, all the continental parts 
of America discovered by the Spaniards, or tffe countries which now form Vene- 
zuela, New Granada, Central America, Equator, Peru, <fec.' — Spiers. 

' Hap. Happen. 'To brandish the tongue wantonly, to slash and smite with 
it any that happeth to come in our way, doth argue malice or madness.' — Barrou. 



620 Of Vicissitudes of Things. [Essay Iviii. 

"West Indies, it is very probable that tliej are a newer or a 
younger people than the people of the old world ; and it is • 
much more likely, that the destruction that hath heretofore 
been there, was not by earthquakes (as the Egyptian priest told 
Solon, concerning the island of Atlantis," that it was swallowed 
by an earthquake), but rather, that it was desolated by a par- 
ticular' deluge — for earthquakes are seldom in those parts : but 
on the other side, they have such pouring rivers, as* the rivers 
of Asia, and Africa, and Europe, are but brooks to them. Their 
Andes likewise, or mountains, are far higher than those with 
us ; whereby it seems, that the remnants of generations of men 
were in such a particular deluge saved. As for the observation 
that Machiavel* hath, that the jealousy of sects doth much ex- 
tinguish the memory of things — traducing^ Gregory the Great, 
that he did what in him lay to extinguish all heathen antiqui- 
ties — I do not find that those zeals* do any great effects, nor last 
long ; as it appeared in the succession of Sabinian, who did 
revive the former antiquities. 

Tlie vicissitudes, or mutations, in the superior globe, are no 
fit matter for this present argument.' It may be, Plato's great 
year," if the world should last so long, would have some efi'ect, 
not in renewing the state of like individuals (for that is the 
fume' of those that conceive the celestial bodies have more 
accurate influences upon these things below, than indeed they 
have) but in gross." Comets, out of question, have likewise 

1 ■• 

> Vid. Plat. Tim. iii. 24, seq. 

" Particular. Partial ; not general. 

* As. That. See page 23. 

* Mach. Disc. Sop. liv. ii. 5. 

* Traduce. 7b condemn ; to censitre, whether justly or unjustly. (Now, to cal- 
umniate, tofcslander.) 

* Zeals. (Not now used in the plural.) 
' Argument. Subject. 

' She who even but now was your best object. 
Your praise's argument, balm of j'our age. 
Dearest and best.' — Shakespere. 
" Plat. Tim. iii. 88, seq. 

* Fume. Idle conceit ; vain imagination. 'If his sorrow bring forth amend- 
ment, he hath the grace of hope, though it be clouded over with a melancholy 
futne.' — Hammond. 

'" Gross. On the whole. ' The confession of our sins to God may be general, 
■when we only confess in gross that we are sinful ; or particular, when we mention 
the several sorts and acts of our sins.' — Duty of Man. 



Essay Iviii.] Of Vicissitudes of Thiiigs. 6?J 

power and effect over the gross' and mass of things ; bnt they 
are rather gazed upon, and waited upon^ in their journey, than 
wisely observed in their effects, especially in their respective 
effects; that is, what kind of comet, for magnitude, colour, 
version' of the beams, placing in the region of heaven or lasting, 
produceth what kind of effects. 

There is a toy, which I have heard, and I would not have it 
given over, but waited upon a little. They say it is observed 
in the Low Countries (I know not in what part), that every 
five and thirty years, the same kind and sute* of years and 
weathers comes about again ; as great frosts, great wet, great 
droughts, warm winters, summers with little heat, and the like ; 
and they call it the prime ; it is a thing I do the rather men- 
tion, because, computing backwards, I have found some con- 
currence. 

But to" leave these points of nature, and to come to men. 
The greatest vicissitude of things amongst men, is the vicissi- 
tude of sects and religions ; for these orbs rule in men's minds 
most. The true religion is built upon the rock ; the rest are 
tossed upon the waves of time. To speak, therefore, of the 
causes of new sects, and to give some counsel concerning them, 
as far as the weakness of human judgment can give stay' to so 
great revolutions. 

When the religion formerly received is rent by discords, and 
when the holiness of the professors of religion is decayed and 
full of sc idal, and withal" the times be stupid, ignorant, and 
barbarous, you may doubt' the springing up of a new sect ; if 



'Gross. The chief part ; the main hodij. 'The ^ymss of the people can have no 
other prospect in changes and revoUitions than of public blessings.' — Addison. 

* Waited upon. Watched. See page 204. 
' Version. Direction. 

* Sute or suit. Order ; correspondence. ' Touching matters belonging to the 
Church of Christ, this we conceive that they are not of one sute.' — Booker. For 
our expression ' out of sorts,' Shakspere has ' out of sntes.' 

' Stay. Check. 

' With prudent stay he long deferred 
The fierce contention.' — Philips. 

* Withal. Likewise; besides. 

' God, when He gave me strength, to shew withal. 
How slight the gift was, liung it in my hair.' — Miltoji. 
' Doubt. To fear; to apprehend. 'This is enough for a project without any 
name. I doubt more than will be reduced into practice.' — Swift. 



522 Of Vicissitudes of Things. [Essay Iviii. 

then also tliere should arise any extravagant and stj-ange spirit 
to make himself author thereof — all which points held when 
Mahomet published his law. If a new sect have not two pro- 
perties, fear it not, for it will not spread : the one is the sup- 
planting, or the opposing of authority established — for nothing 
is more popular than that; the other is the giving licence to 
pleasures and a voluptuous life : for as for speculative heresies 
(such as were in ancient times the Arians, and now the Armi- 
nians), though they work mightily upon men's wits, they do not 
produce any great alteration in States, except it be by the help 
of civil occasions. There be three manner of plantations of 
new sects — by the power of signs and miracles ; by the eloquence 
and wisdom of speech and persuasion ; and by the sword. For 
martyrdoms, I reckon them amongst miracles, because they 
seem to exceed the strength of human nature : and I may do 
the like of superlative and admirable holiness of life; Surely 
there is no better way to stop the rising of new sects and 
schisms than to reform abuses ; to compound the smaller dif- 
ferences ; to proceed mildly, and not Avith sanguinary persecu- 
tions ; and rather to take off the principal authors, by winning 
and advancing them, than to enrage them by violence and bit- 
terness. 

The changes and vicissitudes in w^ars are many, but chiefly 
in three things ; in the seats or stages of the ' war, in the 
weapons, and in the manner of the conduct. Wars, in ancient 
time, seemed more to move from east to west ; for the Persians, 
Assyrians, Arabians, Tartars (which were the invaders), were all 
eastern people. It is true, the Gauls were w^estern ; but we 
read but of two incursions of theirs — the one to Gallo-Grsecia, 
the other to Home ; but east and west have no certain points 
of heaven, and no more have the wars, either from the east or 
west, any certainty of observation ; but north and south are 
fixed; and it hath seldom or never been seen that the far 
southern people have invaded the northern, but contrariwise' — 
whereby it is manifest that the northern track of the w^orld is 
in nature the more martial region — be it in respect of the stars 
of that hemisphere, or of the great continents that are upon 
the north ; whereas the south part, for aught that is known, is 



* Contrariwise, On the contrary. See page 82. 



Essay Iviii.] Of Vicissitudes of Things. 623 

almost all sea, or (which is most apparent) of the cold of the 
northern parts, which is that, which, without aid of discipline, 
doth make the bodies hardest, and the courage warmest. 

Upon the breaking- and shivering of a great State and empire, 
you may be sure to have wars ; for great empires, while they 
stand, do enervate and destroy the forces of the natives which 
they have subdued, resting upon their own protecting forces ; 
and then when they fail also, all goes to ruin, and they become 
a prey ; so it was in the decay of the Roman empire, and like- 
wise in the empire of Almaigne,' after Charles the Great, every 
bird taking a feather, and were not unlike to befall to^ Spain, 
if it should break. iH^ great accessions and unions of kingdoms 
do likewise stir up wars ; for when a State gi-ows to an over 
power, it is like a great flood, that will be sure to overflow, as 
it hath been seen in the States of Home, Turkey, Spain, and 
others. Look when the world hath fewest barbarous people, 
but such as commonly will not marry, or generate, except they 
know means to live (as it is almost everywhere at 4lis day, 
except Tartary), there is no danger of inundations of people ; 
but when there be great shoals of people, which go on to popu- 
late, without foreseeing means of life and sustentation,' it is of 
necessity that once in an age or two they discharge a portion 
of their people upon other nations, which the ancient northern 
people were wont to do by lot — casting lots what part should 
stay at home, and what should seek their fortunes. When a 
warlike State grows soft and efleminate, they may be sure of a 
war ; for commonly such States are grown rich in the time of 
their degenerating, and so the prey inviteth, and their decay iu 
valour encourageth a war. 

As for the weapons, it hardly falleth under rule and observa- 
tion ; yet we see even they have returns and vicissitudes ; for 



* Almaigne. Germany. 

'Then I stoutly won in fight 
The Emperour's daugliter of Almaigne.' — Sir Giiy of WarwicJc. 

* Befall to (unusual with to.) To happen. 

' Some great mischief hath befallen 
To that meek man.' — Hilton. 
' Sustentation. Support. ' He (Malcolm) assigned certain rents for the susien- 
tation of the canons he had placed there of the order of St. Augustine.' — ■ 
Holinshed. 



524 Of Vicissitudes of Things. [Essay Iviii. 

certain it is, that ordnance was known in the city of the Oxy- 
draces in Lidia, and was that which the Macedonians called 
thunder, and lightning, and magic, and it is well known that 
the use of ordnance hath been in China above two thousand 
years. The conditions of weapons and their improvements are, 
first, the fetching' afar off, for that outruns the danger, as it is 
eeen in ordnance and muskets ; secondly, the strength of the 
percussion, wherein likewise ordnance do exceed all arietations' 
and ancient inventions ; the third is, the commodious use of 
them, as that they may serve in all weathers, that the carriage 
may be light and manageable, and the like. 

For the conduct of the war : at the first^en rested extremely 
upon number ; they did put the wars lil^vise upon main force 
and valour, pointing' days for pitched fields,* and so trying it 
out upon an even mach, and they were more ignorant in 
ranging and arraying their battles.^ After, they grew to rest 
upon number rather competent than vast, they grew to advan- 
tages d^l^lace, cunning diversions, and the like, and they grew 
more skilful in the ordering of their battles. 

In the youth of a State, arms do flourish, in the middle age 
of a State, learning, and then both of them together for a time ; 
in the declining age of a State, mechanical arts and merchandise. 
Learning hath its infancy, when it is but beginning, and almost 
childish ; then his youth, when it is luxuriant and juvenile ; 
then his strength of years, when it is solid and reduced ;' and 
lastly, his' old age, when it waxeth dry and exhaust." But it is 
not good to look too long upon these turning wheels of vicissi- 
tude, lest we become giddy. As for the philology of them, that 
is but a circle of tales, and therefore not fit for this writing. 



' Feicli. To strike from a distance. 

* Arietation. The use of battering-rams. 
^ Point, To appoint. See page 412. 

* Fields. Battles. 

' And whilst a. field should be dispatcli'd and fought. 
You are disputing of your generals.' — Shakespere. 
' Battles. Forces. 

' Wliat may the king's whole battle reach unto ?' — Shakespere. 

* Tledueed. Subjected (to rule). The Romans reduced Spain, Gaul, and Britain 
by their arms.' — Ogilvie. 

' His. Its. See page 372. 

* Exhaust, Fxhausted. See page 76. 



A FRAGMENT OF AN ESSAY ON FAME. 

T^HE poets make Fame a monster ; they describe her in part 
-■- finely and elegantly, and in part gravely and sententiously ; 
they say, look how many feathers she hath, so many eyes she 
hath underneath, so many tongues, so many voices, she pricks 
up so many ears, 

This is a flourish : there follow excellent parables ; as that 
she gathereth strength in going; that she goeth upon the 
ground, and yet hideth her head in the clouds ; that in the 
day-time she sitteth in a watch-tower, and flieth most by night ; 
that she mingleth things done with things not done ; and that 
she is a terror to great cities : but that which passeth all the 
rest is, they do recount that the earth, mother of the giants 
that made war against Jupiter, and were by him destroyed, 
thereupon in anger brought forth Fame ; for certain it is that 
rebels, figured by the giants, and seditious fames' and libels, 
are but brothers and sisters, masculine and feminine ; but now 
if a man can tame this monster, and bring her to feed at the 
hand, and govern her, and with her fly* other ravening' fowl 
and kill them, it is somewhat worth. But we are infected with 
the style of the poets. To speak now in a sad* and serious 
manner, there is not in all the politics a place less handled, and 
more worthy to be handled, than this of fame ; we will there- 
fore speak of these points ; what are false fames, and what are 
true fames, and how they may be best discerned,' how fames 
may be sown and raised, how they may be spread and multi- 
plied, and how they may be checked and laid dead, and other 



^ Fames. Reports; rumours. See page 119. 
*Fly. Tojly; to attack: 

'Fly everything you see, and censure it freely.' — Be7i Jonson. 

' Ravening. Predatory ; rapacious. ' As a ravening and roaring lion.' 

Ps. xxii. 13. * Sad. Grave. 

' A sad wise valour is the brave complexion 
That leads the van.' — Herbert. 
' Discerned. Distinguished. 'Then shalt thou return, and c/iscerw between the 
righteous and tlie wicked, between him that serveth God and him that servelh 
Him not.' — Mai. iii. 18. 



626 A Fragment of an Essay on Fame. 

things concerning tlie nature of fame. Fame is of tliat force, 
as' there is scarcely any great action wherein it hath not a great 
part, especially in the war. Mucianns undid" Vitellius by a 
fame that he scattered, that Vitellius had in purpose to move 
the legions of Syria into Germany, and the legions of Germany 
into Syria ; whereupon the legions of Syria were infinitely 
inflamed.' Julius Caesar took Pompey unprovided, and laid 
asleep his industry and preparations by a fame that he cun- 
ningly gave out, how Caesar's owm soldiers loved him not ; and 
being wearied with the wars, and laden with the spoils of Gaul, 
would foi-sake him as soon as he came into Italy.* Livia 
settled all things for the succession of her son Tiberius, by 
continually giving out that her husband Augustus was upon 
recovery and amendment;^ and it is a usual thing with the 
bashaws to conceal the death of the Great Turk from the 
janizaries and men of war, to save the sacking of Constantinople, 
and other towns, as their manner is. Themistocles made 
Xerxes, King of Persia, post apace' out of Grecia,' by giving 
out that the Grecians had a purpose to break his bridge of 
ships w^hich he had made athw^art* the Hellespont.^ There be 
a thousand such like examples, and the more they are, the less 
they need to be repeated, because a man meeteth with them 
everywhere ; wherefore, let all wise governors have as great a 
w^atch and care over fames, as they have of the actions and 
designs themselves. 



* As. That. See page 23. 

* Undid. Ruined. (Xot so frequently used in this sense as are tlie other tenses 
of the verb ' to undo.') 

' Where, with like haste, through several ways they run, 
Some to undo, and some to be undone. — Denham. 
^ Tacit. Hist. ii. 80. •• Cas. de Bel. Civ. i. 6. 

' Tacit. Ann. i. 5. 

* Apace. Speedily. 

' Ay, quoth my Uncle Glo'ster, 
Small herbs have grace, great weeds do grow apace ; 
And since, methinks, I would not grow so fast, 

Because sweet flowers are slow, and weeds make haste.' — Slinhexpere. 
' Grecia. Greece. 'Through his riches he shall stir up all against the realm 
of Grecia.' — Dan. xi. 2. 

* Athwart. Across. 

' Execrable shape ! 
That dar'st, though grim and terrible, advance 
Thy miscreated front athwart my way.' — Milton. 

* Vid. Herod. viiL 108, 109. 



Annotations. 527 



ANNOTATIONS. 

[This Essay is reckoned a fragment, as it is supposed Bacon must have ■written 
much more on the subject: but it is complete as far as it goes; and there are 
many of the other Essays that would have borne to be much enlarged.] 

^ Fame is of that force as there is scarcely any great action 
wherein it hath not a great part, as . . . . a man. 
medeth with them ei^erywhere^ 

By ' fame,' Bacon means what we call ' report,' or ' rnmonr,' 
or the French on dit. 

One remarkable instance of the eifects produced by rnmoiirs 
might be added to those Bacon mentions. "When Buonaparte's 
return from Elba was plotted, his partisans went all about 
France, pretending to seek to purchase land ; and when in 
treaty for a field, and seemingly about to close the bargain, 
they inquired about the title j and when they found, as they 
generally did, that it was land which had been confiscated at the 
Revolution^ they broke off at once, declaring that the title was 
insecure : thus spreading throughout France the notion that the 
Bourbons meditated the resumption of all those lands — the chief 
part of France — to restore them to the former owners. And thus, 
most of the proprietors were eager for their downfall. 

Some remarks on political predictions, already made in my 
notes on the Essay ' Of Prophecies,' might come in under this 
head. 

'•Let all ivise governors have as great a watch and care over 
fames as they have of the actions and designs themselves.^ 

The necessity of this watchfulness from the effects produced 
by them seems to have been recognised at a very early period 
in our legislative history. We have before noticed a statute 
respecting them made in the reign of Edward the First. It 
enacts tliat ' forasmuch as there have been oftentimes found in 
the country Devisors of Tales, whereby discord [or occasion] of 
discord hath arisen many times between the King and liis 
people, or great men of this realm ; for the damage that hath 



528 A Fraginent of an Essay on Fame. 

and may thereof ensue ; it is commanded, that from henceforth 
none be so hardy to tell or publish any false news or tales, 
whereby discord, or [matter] of discord or slander may grow 
between the King and his people, or the great men of the 
realm ; and he that doth so shall be taken and kept in prison, 
until he hath brought him into the Court which was the first 
which did speak the same.' — ZEd\o.\. Stai. Westraonast. 1, c. 
xxxiv. 

The framing and circulating of ' politic fames' might have 
been set down by Bacon as one of the points of cimning. 



THE PRAISE OF KNOWLEDGE. 

SILENCE were tlie best celebration of that which I mean to 
commend ; for who would not use silence, where silence is 
not made ? and what crier can make silence in such a noise and 
tumult of vain and popular opinions? My praise shall be 
dedicated to the mind itself. The mind is the man, and the 
knowledge of the mind. A man is but what he knoweth. The 
mind itself is but an accident to knowledge, for knowledge is 
a double of that which is. The truth of being, and the truth of 
knowing, is all one ; and the pleasures of the affections greater 
than the pleasures of the senses. And are not the pleasures of the 
intellect greater than the pleasures of the affections ? Is it not 
a true and only natural pleasure, whereof there is no satiety ? 
Is it not knowledge that doth alone clear the mind of all per- 
turbations ? How many things are there which we imagine not ! 
How many things do we esteem and value otherwise than they 
are ! This ill-proportioned estimation, these vain imaginations, 
these be the clouds of error that turn into the storms of pertur- 
bation. Is there any such happiness as for a man's mind to be 
raised above the confusion of things, where he may have the 
prospect of the order of nature, and the error of men ? Is this 
but a vein only of delight, and not of discovery ? — of content- 
ment, and not of benefit? Shall we not as well discern the 
riches of nature's warehouse as the benefit of her shop? Is 
truth ever barren ? Shall we not be able thereby to produce 
worthy effects, and to endow the life of man with infinite com- 
modities? But shall I make this garland to be put upon a 
wrong head ? "Would any body believe me if I should verify 
this, upon the knowledge that is now in use ? Are we the richer 
by one poor invention, by reason of all the learning that hath 
been these many hundred years? The industry of artificers 
maketh some small improvement of things invented ; and chance 
sometimes, in experimenting,' maketh us to stumble upon some- 



' Experiment. To make experiments, 'Francisco Redi, by experimenting 
found that . . . .' — Ray. 

45 



630 TliC Praise of Knowledge. 

what M^iicli is new ; but all the disputation of the learned never 
brought to light one effect of nature before unknown. When 
things are known and found out, then they can descant upon 
them, they can knit them into certain causes, they can reduce 
them to their principles. If any instance of experience stand 
against them, they can range it in order by some distinctions. 
But all this is but a web of the wit ;' it can work nothing, I 
do not doubt but that common notions, which we call reason^ 
and the knitting of them together, which we call logic, are the 
art of reason and studies. But they rather cast obscurity, than 
gain light to'' the contemplation of nature. 

All the philosophy of nature which is now received, is cither 
the philosophy of the Grecians, or that of the alchemists. That 
of the Grecians hath the foundations in words, in ostentation, 
in confutation, in sects, in schools, in disputations. The Gre- 
cians were, as one of themselves saith, you Gr^ecians^ ever 
children.^ They knew little antiquity ; they knew, except 
fables, not much above five hundred years before themselves. 
They knew but a small portion of the world. That of the 
alchemists hath the foundation in imposture, in auricular tradi- 
tions and obscurity. It was catching hold of religion, but the 
principle of it is, Pojoidus vuU decipi.'' So that I know no 
great difference between these great philosophers, but that the 
one is a loud crying folly, and the other is a whispering folly. 
The one is gathered out of a few vulgar observations, and the 
other out of a few experiments of a furnace. The one never 
faileth to multiply words, and the other ever faileth to multiply 
gold. Who would not smile at Aristotle, when he admireth 
the eternit^^ and invariableness of the heavens, as there were 
not the like in the bowels of the earth? Those be the confines 
and borders of these two kingdoms, where the continual altera^ 
tion and incursion are. The superficies and upper parts of the 
earth are full of varieties. The superficies and lower parts of 
the heavens, which we call the middle region of the air, are full 
of variety. There is much spirit in the one part that cannot 
be brought into mass. There is much massy body in the other 



* Wit. Intellect. ' Will puts in practice what the wei deviseth.' — Davies. 
' To. For. See page 225. 

* Plato, See Advancement of Learning, Book I. 

* ' The people wish to be deceived.' 



Tha Praise of K7iowlet'<if 531 

place that cannot be refined to spirit. Tlie 's as 

the waste ground between the borders. Who "le 

at the astronomers, I mean not these few carme 
the earth about,' but the ancient astronomers, whi 
moon to be the swiftest of the planets in motion, ana 
order, the higher the slower ; and so are compelled to 
a double motion ; whereas how evident is it, that thai 
they call a contrary motion, is but an abatement of mo 
The fixed stars overgo" Saturn, and so in them and the rest, 
is but one motion, and the nearer the earth the slower— , 
motion also whereof air and water do participate, though much 
interrupted. 

But why do I in a conference of pleasure enter into these 
great mattei's, in sort' that pretending to know much, I 
should forget what is seasonable ? Pardon me, it was because 
all things may be endowed and adorned with speeches, but 
knowledge itself is more beautiful than any apparel of words 
that can be put upon it. And let not me seem arrogant 
without respect to these great reputed authors. Let me so 
give every man his due, as I give Time liis due, which is 
to discover truth. Many of these men had greater wits, far 
above mine own, and so are many in the nnivereities of Europe 
at this day. But, alas ! they learn nothing there but to be- 
lieve ; first to believe that others know tliat which they know 
not ; and after, themselves know that which they know not. 
But, indeed, facility to believe, impatience to doubt, temerity 
to answer, glory to know, doubt to contradict, end to gain, 
sloth to search, seeking things in words, resting in part of 
nature ; these, and the like, have been the things which have 
forbidden the happy match between the mind of man and the 
nature of things, and in place thereof have married it to vain 



* Probably a sneer at Copernicus. His disparagement of him, I have alluded 
to in the preface. 

" Overgo. To pass over. 

' How many weary steps 
Of many weary miles you have o'ergom. 
Are numbered in the travel of one mile.' — Shakespere. 
' In sort. In suck a manner. ' Flowers worn in such sort can neither be seen 
well, nor smelt by those that wear them.' — Hooker. 

' Let's on our way in silent s<yrt.' — Shakespere. 



532 The Praise of Knowledge. 

notions and blind experiments ; and what the posterity and 
issue of so honourable a match may be, it is not hard to 
consider. 

Printing, a gross' invention ; artillery, a thing that lay not 
far out of the way ; the needle, a thing partly known before : 
what a change have these three made in the world in these 
times ; the one in state of Earning, the other in state of the 
war, the third in the state of treasure, commodities, and navi- 
gation ! And those, I say, were but stumbled upon and lighted 
upon by chance. Tlierefore, no doubt, the sovereignty of Man 
lieth hid in knowledge ; wherein many things are reserved, 
which kings with their treasure cannot buy, nor with their force 
command ; their spials^ and intelligencers can give no news of 
them, their seamen and discoverers cannot sail where they 
grow ; now we govern nature in opinions, but we are tliralP 
unto her in necessity ; but if we would be led by her in inven- 



ANTITHETA. 
Pro. Contra. 

' Ea demura voluptas est secundum ' Contemplatio, speciosa inertia, 

naturam, cujus non est satietas. ' Contemplation is a specious indo- 

' The only pleasure which can be con- lence.' 
formable to nature is that which knows 

no satiety.' ' Bene cogitare, non multo melius est, 

quam bene somniare. 
***** ' Thinking well is not very different 

' Omnes affectus pravi, falsse estima- frmn dreaming well.' 
tiones sunt ; atque eadem sunt bonitas 
et Veritas. 

'Bad tendencies are, in fact, false 
judgments of things; f<yr truth ana 
goodness are the same.' 



* Gross. Probably palpably obvious ; which it -was (as has been above remarked) 
as soon as a cheap paper was invented. 
' Spials. Scouts. 

' For he by faithful spials was assured 
That Egypt's king was forward on his way.' — Fairfax, 
» Thrall. Slave. 

' No thralls like them that inward bondage have.' 



Annotation. 633 



ANNOTATION. 

No better annotation can be given than in Bacon's own 
words, — 'The mistaking or misplacing of the last or farthest 
end of knowledge, is the greatest error of all the rest : For, men 
have entered into a desire of learning and knowledge, sometimes 
upon a natural curiosity, and inquisitive appetite ; sometimes 
to entertain their minds with variety and delight ; sometimes 
for ornament and reputation ; and sometimes to enable them to 
victory of wit and contradiction ; and most times for lucre and 
profession ; — but seldom sincerely to give a true account of their 
gift of reason, to the benefit and use of men : As if there were 
sought in knowledge, a couch whereupon to rest a searching 
and restless spirit ; or a terras for a wandering and variable 
mind to walk up and down with a fair prospect ; or a tower of 
state for a proud mind to raise itself upon ; or a fort or com- 
manding ground for strife and contention ; or a shop for profit 
or sale ; — and not a rich store-house for the glory of the Crea- 
tor, and the relief of man's estate." 



* Advancement of Learning. 

45* 



INDEX. 



ESSAY OP PAQK 

Adversity 52 

Ambition 360 

Anger 513 

Atheism ^ 140 

Beauty 406 

Boldness 109 

Building 4:10' 

Ceremonies and Eespects . . ... . . . 479' 

Children (and Parents) . . . . . . . . .71 

Counsel . . . . . 189' 

Cunning .....-.■ 204' 

Custom and Education . . . ... . . . 371 

Death . . . . . . . . . . • .14 

Deformity . . . 408 

Delays ....-.•. . .* . . . -198 

Discourse .'..■.■.•. . . . • • 320 
Dispatch . • . . • . . . . . . . • .246 

Dissimulation ...'.■. 63 

Education (Custom and) . 371 

Empire 184 

Envy 80 

Expense 277 

Faction 474 

Fame, Fragment of an Essay on 525 

Followers and Friends 437 

Fortune 385 

Friendship 259 

Gardens 415 

Glory, of Vain 493 

Goodness, and Goodness of Nature 112 

Great Place 92 

Health, Regimen 301 

Honour and Reputation 496 

Innovations 225 

Judicature 504 



536 ♦ INDEX. 

ESSAY or PAOl 

"Kingdoms and Estates, the True Greatness of ... . 283 

Knowledge, the Praise of 529 

Love 88 

Man's Self, Wisdom for a 218 

Marriage and Single Life VS 

Masques and Triumphs 363 

Nature in Men 367 

Negotiating 423 

Nobility 119 

Parents and Children VI 

Plantations 329 

Praise 483 

Prophecies 353 

Eevenge 45 

Kiches 342 

Seditions and Troubles 124 

Self, Wisdom for .218 

Simulation and Dissimulation 63 

Single Life 75 

Studies 444 

Suitors 441 

Superstition 153 

Suspicion 306 

Things, Vicissitudes of 519 

Travel 178 

Truth 1 

Unity in Religion . .♦ 20 

Usury 390 

Youth and Age 397 

Wise, Seeming 252 

"Wisdom for one's Self 218 



THE END. 



VALUABLE STANDARD BOOKS 

PUBLISHED BY 

a S. FRANCIS & CO., NEW YORK. 



ALEXANDER HAMILTON. 

WORKS, Comprlsirtg his Correspondence, and his Politieal and Official "Writings, 
(exclusive of the Federalist,") Civil and Military. Published from the original 
manuscripts deposited in the Department of State, by order of the joint Li- 
brary C-ommittee of Congress. Edited by John C. Hamilton, Esq. 7 vols., 8vo. 

WILLJAM WARE. 

« ZEX()BL\; or, Tlie Fall of Palmyra. An Historical Romance. l'2mo. $1.25. 
AURELIAN; or, Rome in the niird Century. 12mo. $1.25. 
JULIAN; or. Scenes in Judea. 12mo. $1..25. 

HENRY W. LONGFELLOW. 

THE POETS AND POETRY OF EUROPE. With Biographical Notices and 
Translations, from the earliest period to the present time. Comprising Trans- 
lations from the Anglo-Saxon, Icelandic, Swedish, Dutch, German, French, 
Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, <fcc,, &c One large 8vo. volume, $5,00 ; Morocco 
antique, $7.00. 
" A more desirable work for the scholar, or man of taste, has scarcely ever been issued in the 
United States." 

FREDERICK H. HEDGE. 

PROSE WRITERS OF GERMANY. 1 vol., 8vo. With Portraits of Goethe, 
Luther, Lessing, Mendels.shon, Herder, Schiller, Richter, and Schlegel. $3.00; 
Morocco antique, $5.00. 
"The best collection published in the English language, of specimens of the German authors." 

ORVILLE DEWEY, D. D. 

DISCOURSES on Human Nature, Human Life, and the Nature of Religion ; on 

Commerce and Business; u]ion Questions of Controversial Tlieology and 

Practical Rehgion. 3 vols., 12mo. ' 

L. MARIA CHILD. 
PHILOTHEA, a Grecian Romance. 12mo. 75 cents. 
LETTERS FROM NEW YORK. 2 vols. Eighth Edition. $1.50. 
THE MOTHER'S BOOK 50 cents. 
BIOGRAPHIES OF GOOD WIVES. 62^ cents. 
HISTORY OF THE CONDITION OF WOMEN in various Ages and Nations. 2 

vols. $1.25. 
MEMOIRS OF MADAME DE STAEL and of MADAME ROLAND. 62^ cents. 
FACT AND FICTION. A Collection of Stories. 75 cents. 
FLOWERS FOR CHILDREN. 88 cents. 
A NEW FLOWER FOR CHILDREN. 75 cents. 
AUTUMNAL LEAVES, a Collection of Tales and Sketches in Prose and Rhyme. 

12mo, $1.00; gilt, $1.25. 
PROGRESS OF RELIGIOUS IDEAS THROUGH SUCCESSIVE AGES. 3 vols., 

8vo. $4.00. 
"Certainly such a task was never executed with more fidelity, with a more masterly judgment, 
or with a nicer remembrance of the proportionate value of authorities." 

SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

THE WAVERLY NOVELS. 27 vols. I LIFE OF SCOTT, by Lockhart. 4 vols. 
POETICAL WORKS, Complete. 6 vols. ] TALES OF A GRANDFATHER 4 vols. 

UNIFORM CLASSICAL SERIES.— ILLUSTRATED. 

RASSELAS, by Dr. Johnson, witli six tinted engravings. 
PAUL AND VIRGINIA, by St. Pierre, 
ELIZABETH, by Mad^ame Cottin, 
UNDINE, by Baron Fouque, 

JSach in cloth, 62 cents ; gilt, 88 cents ; Morocco, $1.00. 



C, S. FKANCIS & CO., 

Have recently published — 

AURORA LEIGH. 

BY ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 

One VoLtnuE, 12mo. Price, $1,00," Gilt, $1.50. 

From E>ngli»h Oiticismt. 

•" Anrora Leigh,' Mrs. Browmnp's new poem, Js a wealthy world of beauty, trnth, and tfte no- 
blest thoughts, faiths, hopes, anJ charities, that can inform and sanctify our human nature. It is 
a gem for this age to wear with other imperisPiahle jewels on its forehead." — Globe. 

" If Mrs. Browning had not produced ' Aurora Leigh,' we should stiil have recognized her as an 
exquisite )yrical poet, ctimbining, in a degree almost unexampfed, profundity of thought, and ex 
tent of learning ; but we shoulii not have known that she possessed that disciplined energy, that 
unflagging imagination, which were necessary for the composition of the greatest poem ever written 
by a woman. She may now, without presumption, take her stand amidst the most illustrious of 
those who have expressed high an A holy thougiits in the mosJcof verse." — Daily News. 

"When, some weeks ago, we anticipated the delight of a new poem from Mrs. Browning, wa 
never, in onr keenest, expectations, thought of receiving so fine a p»eini as 'Aurora Leigh,' which 
surpasses in sustained strength and variety any thing English poetry has had since ' Childe Harold.' 
It places Mrs. Browning, beyond dispute, at the head of all poetesses, ancient or modern; and 
although it will be judged diversely by divers minds, no one, we fancy, win venture to claim for 
any other woman's p^era an ecjual rank." — Leader. 

POEMS OF ELIZABETH BAllRETT BROWNING. 2 Volumes, 12mo. $2.00; 
gilt, $2.50. ) 

PROMETHEUS BOUND, and other Poems, including " Sonnets from the Portu. 
guese," " Casa Guidi Windows," etc., by Mrs. Browning. 12mo. 75 cents; 
gilt, $1.00. 

POEMS 

OF THE HON. 

CAROLINE ELIZABETH NORTON. 

IN ONE VOLUME, CBOWN OCTAVO. 

WITH PORTRAITS AND FINE STEEL ENGRAVINGS 

" We have one human heart. 
All mortal thoughts confess a common home." — Shelly. 

Cloth, $2.25 ; full gilt, $3 ; morocco antique, $5. 

"The Dream is a very beautiful Poem." — London Quarterly Review. 

" The fau-est wreath as yet won in the service of the Muses for the name of Sheridar. — Ibid." 



POEMS OF FELICIA HEMANS, 

■WITH AH 

BY MRS. SiaOURNEY. 

IN ONE TOLUME, CROWN OCTAVO. 

WJTJt PORTRAIT AND FINE STEEL ENGRAVINGS 
Cloth, |2; full gilt, $8; morocco antique, $5. 



C. S. FRANCIS & CO. 

IIa:>e recently puMkhea — 

POETS AND POETRY OF EUROPE, 

SSIitS 3ntrolJuttions ani JBiojrapJital Notitfs, 
uy 

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 

From Helicon's harmomous springs 

A thousand rills their mazy progress take. — Gray, 

ONE THICK VOLCME, OCTAVa 

WITH STEEL PLATE TITLE AND FRONTISPIECE. 

Prioc hound iii cloth, $5 ; full giU, $6 ; in JIToneeo and antique, f 7,50. 

CJomprising translations from the Anglo-Saxon, Icelandic, Swedish, Dutch, Gemiaa 

French, Italian, Sjianisli, Portuguese, &c,, &c., from tlie earliest 

period to the present time. 

" The most complete work of the kind in English literature." — Boston Courier. 

* A more desirable worTc for th« scholar or the man of taste, has scarcely ever been issued in the 
United Stxtes."^— Tribune. 

"A new edition of this copiou-s and delightful collection of translations from European poetry, 
appears opportunely at the season when book-buyers begin to choose volumes for presents to theii 
ffriends ; few books can be found that will be more certain to give pleasure to a cultivated mind." — 
4jommercial Adver'tiser. 



PROSE WRITERS OF GERMANY. 

BY FREDERIC H. HEDGE. 
WITH PORTRAITS ON STEKL, 

OF GOETHE, LUTHER, LESSING, MENDELSSOHN, HERDER, SCHILLER, RICIITER, AND SCHLEGEL, AND 

2ln Sngrafeeli Qlitle from « jStst'jjn ij 3lcut?t, 

ONB VOLCTHE, OCTAVO. 

CMh, $3,- full gilt, $4,- Morocco and antiqtie, $5.00l 

" This work comprises copious extracts from the works of the most eminent writers of G«rmany» 
from Luther to the present time." 

" A rich exhibition of the profound thought, subtile speculation, massive learning, and genial 
temper, that characterize the most eminent literary men of that nation." 



EOEMS OF WORDSWORTH. 

WITH AS 

INTEODlJCTOaY ESSAY ON HIS LIFE AND WRITrNGS, 

BY 

BY H. T. TUCKERMAN, 
\ WITH SIX BEAUTIFUL STEEL ENGRAVINGS. 

ONE VOLUME, CBOWN OCTAVO. 

Cloth, $2 ,- fuU gilt, $3 ,• antique, |5. 

" Wordsworlli's poetry stands distisct in the world. That which to other men is an occasional 
pleasure, or possibly delight, and to other poets an occasional transport, the seeing thix vixible 
Universe, is to him, a Life — one Individiial Human Life— namely, his Own, travelling the whole 
journey from the cradle to the grave. And that Life — for what else' could he do with it? — he has 
verified — sung. And there is no other such song." — Christopher North, in Blackwocd. 

" The Excursion is the noblest poem in the English language, since Milton's Paradise LosJ. '— 
B. H. Dana. 



BACON'S ESSAYS: with Annotations by 
Richard Whately, D. D., Abp. of Dublin. 

From the Second London Edition, Eevised. 1 vol., 8vo. 
556 pp. 

" This is ever}' way a remarkable book. We bare before us, in this Tolume, the most 
generally popular work of the greatest man of his time, with a Commentary of Anno- 
tations by the man, who, of all living authors, approaches nearest in many of his intel- 
lectual characteristics to Bacon himself. * * We cannot but regard it as a boon con- 
ferred upon all educated men, that this volume has been given to the world. Nor must 
we omit to remark, in this age of readers for mere entertainment, that although the 
volume be a large one, written by an Archbishop, and consisting of comments upoD 
the thoughts of a great philosopher, the book is invested with such an attractive inter- 
est that it cannot fail to prove a readable and entertaining one, even to minds unaccus- 
tomed to high-class thought, and incapable of severe thinking. ****** >Ye 
have given but an imperfect idea of Archbishop Whateley's Annotations, — of their 
range, their cogency, their wisdom, their experience, their practical instruction, their 
wit, their eloquence. The extracts we have quoted are like a sheaf of wheat brought 
from a fi^ld of a hundred acres ; but we trust our readers may be induced to study the 
book for themselves." — Fraser's Magazine, 

" Of all the productions m the English language, Bacon's Essays contain the most 
matter in the fewest words. He intended them to be as ' grains of salt, which should 
rather give an appetite than ofiend with satiety;' and never was the intention of an 
author more fully attained. There were none, he says, of his works which had been 
equally 'current' in his own time ; and he expressed his belief that they would find no 
less favour with posterity, and ' last as long as books and letters endured.' Thus far 
his proud anticipation has been verified. They have been held to be oracles of subtle 
wisdom by the profoundest intellects which have flourished since, and few in any 
department have risen to the rank of authorities with mankind who had not themselves 
been accustomed to sit at the feet of Bacon. His own account of the scope of his 
Essays is, that 'they bandied those things wherein both men's lives and persons are 
most conversant,' while in the selection of his materials he ' endeavoured to make thena 
not vulgar but of a nature whereof much should be found in experience, and little iij 
books ; so as they should be neither repetitions nor fancies.' This is the cause of their 
great success. They treat of subjects which, in his well-known phrase, ' come home to 
men's business and bosoms ;' and the reflections which he ofiers upon these topics of 
universal concern are not obvious truisms, nor hacknied maxims, nor airy speculations, 
but acute and novel deductions drawn from actual life by a vast and penetrating genius, 
intimately conversant with the court, the council-table, the parliament, the bar — with 
all ranks and classes of persons; with the multitudinous forms of human nature and 
pursuits. The progress of events has not rendered them obsolete; their continuotus 
currency through two centuries and a half ha.s not rendered them common-place. 

* * * * "The text of Bacon, and the Notes of his commentator, not only teach 
wisdom, but they instil the desire to be wise. There cannot be a stronger induce- 
ment to study them. In the few topics upon which we have treated, we are conscioilC 
that we have neither done justice to the great variety of the truths which Archbishop 
Whately has put forth, nor to his mode of enforcing them. The cogency of his argu- 
ments, as well as the larger part of the valuable lessons he inculcates, must be sought 
in his book. Nor will the benefit stop with the direct information which he delivers. 
He is one of those thoughtful writers who set others thinking, and it is impossible to 
accompany him to the end without desiring to push on further in that grand track of 
truth in which he is so original and distinguished a pioneer." — London Quarttrljf 
Review. 

PUBLISHED BY 

C. S. FRANCIS AND COMPANY, 

554 BROADWAY, NEW YORK. 

t i'^ 

LBAp'I2 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

Il'ilill!li«iir;iiiii"ii;iiiii 



'"""'linliiillillllll 
014 091 390 A ., 



